Group: P.O.L.E. aka The Super Group
EN 140: English Composition II
Written Report
(O.B.)
Students who work and balancing work, self and family, are two topics that this group
have chosen to put together to make it one big concept. Based on our discussion, we decided to
focus our topic on college students that try to balance their life between work, themselves, and
their family. In literature as in life people who go to school have to care for their families and
jobs as well as continue doing well in school. It sounds like taking on an avalanche with no snow
gear right? WORNG! Its life and there are a lot of people, students in particular, who actually
have to go through this every day. They have to go to school and maintain a family outside of
school as well. Then from aside those two very important duties they have to work! How can
somebody manage a lifestyle that consists of no free time, or a lifestyle that overworks your
body and mind? I believe this is an important topic because I want to take the time to
acknowledge and applaud those who live this way. The work issue I want to address is “How do
students who work balance work, themselves and family?” This is an issue that has a lot of
college and high school students in a chokehold because they want to progress their level of
schooling but a lot of them have to work and maintain families so it leaves them with limited
time, money and resources.
The resources for this project weren’t so hard to find, considering the fact that we all
have this problem where time, money and resources for our families are all limited. So we started
by considering ourselves as prime resources for our project and we took one another’s lifestyles
into consideration. We thought it would be a great idea to spread the word and make the issue
known amongst our classmates because a lot of them might be able to relate and we were right.
Every student in our classroom has the same dilemma going on in his or her lives.
(E.J.)
Our project search came from myriads of sources. Most of the sources came from
newspaper articles such as the New York Times, government websites, text from the course
packet, and work from our group member. We focused more on obtaining our sources through
the Internet as well as accepting the original work done by one of our group members. All the
sources found were very valuable and credible resources and it made us acknowledge the fact
that there are many connections that fall under college students who are trying to balance work,
life and family. As a result, we came across that we have found ampleness of sources and the
information were very sufficient were extremely helpful to our topic.
For instance, in one of our sources that was an article titled “Why Do Students Drop Out?
Because They Must Work at Jobs Too was an article that explained the main reasons on why
college students drop out of college. The pressure and time consuming that college students go
thorough is unbearable; and some drop out because they don’t even think it is worth it. Not only
that, sleep decrease making it unable for students to b fully focused when completing a task. This
source is credible and it was greatly used for our research because of the main topics the author
Elyse Ashburn has brought up contains a strong message and provided legit evidence that we
could use in our project.
Another article titled “Ho To Balance Work and School as A Working College Student” explains
the main reasons of what a college student strives to do in order to be successful, as well as
complete long and time consuming tasks. This source is an internet article opposing as a
newspaper article for the web. This was created by Steven money worth as he gets into detail
explaining his experiences as well. He stated, “Apply for as many scholarships as possible. See if
you be self-employed as a tutor for a particular subject. Sell some of the things you don't use
anymore. Become an RA so that you reduce the amount that you pay for housing. Basically,
think outside the box when it comes to where you can get money. If you determine that you need
to work to support yourself...” This source is a credible source because of its reviews and
remarks from other users and other readers that have read this article. The point of view that the
author is trying to make is that he is that he is talking about ways to balance school, work,
yourself, and your family, but he is also giving advice to those who need to balance these
situations. The reason for the choice of this source is because of the information that it was
providing, and had a good amount of information in our research.
(P.G.)
Each person in the group has not only learned myriads of facts that supports our topic
about a college student balancing work, life and family, but we also as well as other people can
correlate to this as well. Our group’s research did not receive any difficulties on finding
information. Before we started researching, we discussed and noted the requirements that was
assigned to the group and assigned each person to a specific task to complete. An example would
be the excel spreadsheet and word document that we used to keep track of who found sources,
what facts and information were in that source, and documenting the next phase a member in the
group would do. Most steps and advice we used was given by the instructor; but also we wanted
to make this project onto a greater level. We wanted to do better than our last project and bring
something new and something different to the table than all of the other groups. Thanks to Mr.
Grigelevich, we now call ourselves “The Super Group.” Most importantly, we didn’t make our a
problem during the project because everyone has their roles and everyone knew exactly what
they were suppose o do. An example would be our strengths. Each person in our group had
different strengths and we used that to our advantage to exchange parts of he project to one
another. Members such as Omar he is a great speaker and he is great at introductions vocally and
in writing. Elton has a mind that thinks outside of the box. He knew what kind of layouts and
colors the group should use that would to capture people’s attention. As well as noticing the
other group’s flaws and making ours better so it would stand out more differently than the others.
Our group admired the work and what it turned out to be. Everyone pitched in and got along fine
and did not have any conflicts. In the end…we finally understand why Mr. Grigelevich named
us “The Super Group”
(L.F)
My research answered my initial question how do college students balance life, work and
school because it basically proves my point that kids in my generation have to struggle with their
lives just so they can better themselves and (if they have any) their children. The fact that we
have to pay for education makes it harder for us and that’s where we have to balance life, work
and ourselves. This work issue reflects on the everyday work experience of workers is because
since the recession if you don’t have a degree you have a very slim chance of working today. A
lot of people that got laid off because of the recession are unemployed because they didn’t have a
degree and no matter how long you worked somewhere, if you didn’t have a degree you weren’t
going to keep your job. This issue is important to my community/family because my dad got laid
off when the economy went bad and he got laid off for two reasons because he was one of the
people that were making the most money and because he didn’t have a college degree of some
sort. From then on he had the hardest time finding a job in his field, 5 years later he landed a job
a Sears as a tire salesman. He struggles finding a place to live because of it and with that job he
wasn’t even making enough money to pay for the bus every day. Now in the year 2012 he’s just
now getting a job working at HP, he still doesn’t make much, but he’ll get back to his original
job title as a Senior Network System Engineer in a few months hopefully.
How my topic relates to the quote by Studs Terkel in the book Working “violence to the
spirit as well as the body” because when you work, go to school and have children you’re killing
yourself slowly every day. I say this because you’re over doing it just so you can not only better
yourself, but the life of your children. Doing all of that is not only going to exhaust you, but it’s
going to weaken the drive you had to do all that later on when it’s all said and done. Once you
finally graduate college and have the job you always wanted, after like 6 months or so you’re not
going to want to do it anymore because you tired yourself out. Some people, likely do not even
finish school and just keep working the job they have even though that’s not what they wanted to
do because that job pays enough to make it by every day. From my experience of working and
going to school, it was not fun; I was tired all the time because I would come home from work
and then have to stay up late at night doing homework. At that point I wasn’t living with my
mother I was living with a family member and they wanted me to pay a bill since I lived there
and since it wasn’t just the two of us the bill would get pretty high at times so I would have to
work extra just to do it. It was my senior year in high school, I was talking a college class in the
8 in the morning on Mondays and Wednesdays and I was working a full time job on the
weekends so I was driving myself crazy. I would get probably 3 hours of sleep a night because of
homework because of work I can say I was failing my college class and my high classes
miserably. What was the choice I made to better myself? I left that family members house and
lived somewhere us where they thought SCHOOL CAME FIRST!
This topic also connects my oral history because my father has four kids including me
that he had to pay child support for and once he got laid off the child support starting to get
backed up because he didn’t have any money coming in. Then my mother tried to go back to
school to get her degree in nursing so she could get a better job doing something she loved and
provide with for my sister and I. It especially connects to the my CSR paper and the Wal-Mart
film Wal-Mart: High Price of Low Cost because Wal-Mart was not treating their employees right
and a lot of them were single moms that need a full time job and Wal-Mart’s benefits were too
low so they couldn’t use their health insurance for their kids, so “Wal-Mart encourage their
employees to go on welfare” (Wal-Mart: High Cost for Low Prices). In my CSR paper I discuss
Best Buy, and as for Best Buy, when the economy went bad they started a report to for the
customers and the employees to see what they can do to help put their employees in this time in
need. “As the chief executive Brian describes it “Best Buy is about the people in the blue
shirts.”(Sustainability Report: Responsibility in a Recession)
The issues how do college students balance life, work and school connects to what is
going on now because a lot of the students in our school do work either in the school or outside
of the school. From doing a survey on my English class based on the subject I got some
interesting information. I asked the class 1) if they worked, 2) if they had children, 3) do they
work part time or full time, 4) how many hours they work a week, 5) how many hours of sleep
do they sleep on average and 5) do they feel that their work gets in the way of school. In the
results 55% of the students work, 1% of the students have children, 3% percent work between 440 hours a week, 45% work part time and 15% work full time, 80% get 2-8 hours of sleep a day
then 35% feel that work gets in the way of school then 30% don’t. The other percentage didn’t
even answer the question. I feel the students didn’t answer the question because of a couple of
reasons, one of them is because they felt that the question apply to them because they don’t
work. It could have been because they didn’t answer or understand that they don’t work and it
also could have been because they didn’t take the survey seriously because I got a lot of nonserious answers on the survey. All this information came out of a class of 20 kids and more than
half of the class work, imagine what they percentage would be if I did the survey on the whole
school. Plus a lot of student nowadays are having children at a young age so they have to get a
job to provide for their kids and work so they can pay for school and they want their kids to have
a better life than they did.
What I’ve learned from this is that the number of students that have to balance life, school and
work is more than I thought it would be and from what I’ve read on the internet Boston is the
number one area for students to come to school and that means a lot of them work just to get by.
What I mainly learned from all of this is that college should not have to pay for, it doesn’t make
since to me that you have to pay for your education.
(E.J.)
In the process of my research, the information that I have found provided me with
more than enough answers and evidence for my group. My initial question was, “How can
people handle so much with so many burdens in the little time they have?” I have found out that
most people do it because it will make their lives better, but for others it is time consuming, but
they have to get it in order to either make more money or keep their job. For those who have a
family, not only that they have to provide a shelter over their children’s head, but they also have
to spend quality time together. Most kids in present day today are not acknowledged by their
parents because they are always busy, which could lead to a change in a child’s behavior.
It isn’t easy being one person, especially if a person has a lot on their hands; but the importance
of work and family and time for yourself is the outcome. Within a family, the importance ofnit
is the bond that is initiated. That is the most important thing between a child and a adult, which
bringa up a connected between the two. People might even argue that family is not the moat
important thing because of thwir lifestyle and the way they grew up was terrible, but a person
should never orget where they came from or where they originated.Also, Traits such s
responsibility, time management, organization, and intelligence usually starts from home,
which does come from family as well. As for work, it is also important because without money,
how will you be able to take care of your family? how will you be able to put a roof over your
head? how will you be able to pay for the changes in your life that cost so much? Apparently,
money goes around, and if none of it ends up in your wallet; be sure that a job, a career, or an
opportunity will always be an option for a person to make in order to receive money.
Our topic relates to myriads of other issues that we’ve read in short stories, poem, and the CSR.
For instance, one relation would be towards one of the CSR films named The High Cost of Low
Prices. In this film, this generally states and shows how people/ the employers are not only
working, but they are trying o make time and money for themselves and their family. Instead
they are working long hours for the unfair amount of earnings that they deserve. This is how it
represents our topic because from the evidence in the film, there are people trying to balance
their life all together as well as seeing a better future for their social and work life. Also, this is
how most college stents start off. They would take in or try to work as many hours as possible in
order to make a living for themselves or their family; and the hardest thing that they have to
balance them out.
The moral to this is that all three categories such as work, family, and yourself are important
because without one, you can't have the other, since each of them needs one another in order to
balance each other out.
(O.B.)
Our views for this topic are the same, and they didn’t actually change. Within our
research, it persuaded us to research even more. We found out that there are lots of people in this
world who are stressed and tired of what time they have to give up each day to someone or
something. “Do what you got to do” is most people’s motto and that is what convinces them to
keep on striving for their goals. Even though every human being has so much to do in the little
time they have to do it; Sometimes twenty-four hours in one day isn’t enough for a person to
complete the tasks they needed in that particular day; but as a group, we learned that no one is
perfect, but there are people out there working hard trying to accomplish bigger and better
things. We understand that there are days when a person can’t do everything, but the advice that
people can consider is to at least save sometime for you and finish the rest the next day.
Even though the path of perseverance is tough, just try to make best of it. It is not easy for a
person to not only do things on their own, by themselves, and having too may errands to do at
once; but at the end of the rod when all tasks are complete, that person will look back and see
how much time they spent doing it and be thankful for where it has brought them…and that
would be the success.