Work to live or live to work
A realistic Guide to life at UCLan - written by students!
By Mat Marshall, 1st year student
Picture the scene if you will – its day one of fresher’s week 2009 and thousands of fresh faced students descend on campus at universities across the country. They appear from different backgrounds, counties, levels of education and life experience, but no matter their differences they all share a certain few questions (mainly relating to finding the pubs, clubs and kebab shops near to their house). However, the main question on many minds was simply “how long will my money last and when, if ever, do I get a job?”
Long gone are the days where every university student came from a background where Mummy and Daddy paid for practically everything, and gone are the days where those who paid their own way through their degree had savings to last them. We all now live in an age where a full maintenance loan provides the student with around £3000 to last their year, which to those with a mathematical background doesn’t add up to a whole lot.
I am fortunate enough to be part of a course that has a wide range of personalities, each with their own ideas about how they are going to conduct their first year. I’m surrounded by ideas ranging from “I need a job ASAP”, to “I’ve saved enough money over summer to last till Christmas”, to “I don’t need a job, I’m sure my loan will last”. Obviously everyone is entitled to their own ideas, but from my point of view, what with living costs, drinking costs, books and every other penny going towards a social life, a job is pretty much part and parcel of the modern university life.
Many of my course-mates have reached the same conclusion that maintenance loans and grants simply would not carry them through to Christmas, let alone their entire first year, and so have begun this week to join the masses in searching for a part time job to help them pay their way through university. Unfortunately, students are not currently the only people looking for work and competition is stiff, and many are having great difficulty finding even part time seasonal retail work, no matter their experience.
I, however, had a different strategy to employment through university. I had chosen to move to Preston two weeks early and had arrived at the end of August, which had given me an invaluable head start in job hunting around the city centre. I had chosen to look for work within bars, pubs, clubs, hotels – anything that would not only pay my bills, but as an added bonus, working in bars would mean that I would simply not be able to go out drinking every night! So on September 1st, a mountain of CV’s in hand I hit the pavement around the city, handing out my personal propaganda to anyone that would take it. The tactic paid off and by the end of the week I had secured three interviews, two of which became job offers. This meant that by the time I started my course I had already had one week’s work under my belt and was more relaxed and confident about how exactly I was going to fund my student lifestyle.
I’m now two weeks into my course and loving the job, the course, the friends I’ve already made and although I wasn’t able to go out drinking every night of the week during fresher’s I’ve more than made up for it, having gotten to know many of the bar managers across the city my nights out have certainly been entertaining!
My suggestion is that no matter what your background or personal finances, my recommendation to students would be to get a job and the sooner the better, as the consequences of waiting too long only lead to stiff competition for every last remaining job. The cruel reality of university life (while many may not want to accept it) is that most students, at least for their first year, must live to work.