How to combine study and work without getting burned out?
October has begun, which means that the first academic semester is in full swing. But there are still sessions ahead… Here it can be difficult for a student who is fully involved in their studies – and there are many who actively combine university with internships and work!
This must be approached more than seriously: sacrifice a couple of seemingly “extra” seminars and sleepless nights studying classmates’ notes are guaranteed! And if the release is coming, it’s not far from burnout.
Kaspersky Lab interns told how to manage everything: they study, work, and carousing They find time for leisure.
“The main difficulty is the chaotic schedule at the university”
Polina, MSTU im. Bauman, 3rd year bachelor's degree
Study area: “Innovation of IT projects”
Internship area: “Manual testing”
Ideal time for an internship
I got into Kaspersky Lab in the middle of my second year, but it seems to me that the best time for a student to start an internship is at the beginning of the third year. Firstly, because by this time students, as a rule, have an internship and it is most convenient to close it where you are already working. And secondly, the load becomes smaller and there is free space for “maneuver” 🙂
I have real-life examples: guys who started working in their specialty while still studying, as a rule, move up the career ladder. But I don’t recommend going too far with this either: even in the second year, this combination can be very difficult due to the large number of study hours.
Experience of combining work and study
The main difficulty I encountered was the chaotic schedule at the university. This is such a “feature” of my Baumanka – couples during the day can stand at 8 am and at 9 pm. So adapt your trips to the office to this hodgepodge…
You will, of course, say that couples no blows sometimes you can skip it 🙂 But I basically try not to forget about anything (even during lectures!!!), because it’s easier for me to come and take notes on all the information than to cram textbooks before the session and try to understand at least something. Although, of course, there is a prioritization of which subjects need to be studied more and which ones not. But these priorities mainly correlate with the availability of a test or exam in a particular discipline 🙂
An important factor, without which I would hardly have survived all this, is the support of my parents. Contrary to popular belief that parents can often be against early immersion in work, it turned out the opposite for me! At first, my parents, of course, were worried whether I would be able to combine everything, but in the end they were ready to support any of my decisions, which still helps a lot!
My recommendations
Fight procrastination! It seems to me that many people suffer from this, but I have found a way to increase work efficiency: I try to work less at home and do not work at home. When you perform tasks while lying on your bed, a great temptation immediately appears to scroll through social networks, have something to eat, and so on. My solution is to go to the office more often, where on a subconscious level you procrastinate less, and work becomes easier!
Relationships with the team leader and teachers. We must be crystal honest! If you don’t have time for something in your studies or, for example, your schedule has gone wrong, it always makes sense to notify the lead so that he can relieve you of the workload. The attitude of “playing a hero and taking on a couple of extra tasks” never brought me any good – I only got wild stress.
“Students with “excellent student syndrome” have a particularly hard time”
Yaroslav, National Research University Higher School of Economics, 4th year bachelor's degree
Study area: “Journalism”
Internship direction: DevRel
Ideal time for an internship
I’m a fourth-year student and I think this is the best time to start an internship: all the teachers already understand that most of the guys work, and therefore are open to compromises. And they look rather with surprise at students who are exclusively absorbed in their studies.
Experience of combining work and study
Now all our educational activities consist of projects. And it takes much more time than doing classic homework from a textbook. All stages of creating a project fall on the student: it’s not enough to think through the concept and implement it – you also need to effectively defend it in a presentation format! And all this takes time…
The main thing that helps me is using my work cases in educational projects. Here you can contact the team lead and the teacher – in my case, both parties always met halfway. For example, you need to quickly analyze a business case in the field of development. You can take Google Scholar by storm and after a while find something suitable from the scientific literature (and preferably not from Cyberleninka, yeah). Or you can study the case of your company, to which you APRIORI will have faster access, and there will be more data for research.
This can especially help at the final stage of training – a diploma! The pinnacle of a student’s managerial skill, which I am striving for this year, is to integrate my internship experience into the graduate work. This kills three birds with one stone: you significantly simplify your search for sources and work on the empirical part (because from now on, empirics is literally your job), you supply your research with expertise, and you also increase the respectability of your diploma, which is why it will be possible to snag a place in a suitable master’s program much easier!
In terms of time management for combining work and study, I’ll be honest, it’s not as difficult for me as for some other speakers in this article 🙂 What saves you here is the specificity of team projects: in any case, you need to submit them at the right time, but go to great lengths to do this couples are optional!
My recommendations
Integrate workflows into your learning projects. Here I described everything above; whoever understands, understands 🙂
Don’t strive for “perfect” attendance in all classes and perfect grades. Everything here is purely individual, but personally, I quickly realized that running after “tens” (yes, we have a 10-point system) in the fourth year hardly makes sense: in my experience, such grades are earned not by knowledge, but by good old non-stop perseverance. And this very persistence, by the way, can be spent on much more interesting and useful things. Simply put, students with “excellent student syndrome” will find it especially difficult to combine study and work.
“When you start earning money, the possibility of “failing” the discipline is no longer very scary”
Vladislav, RUDN University, 2nd year graduate student
Study area: “Turbomachines and piston engines”
Internship area: DevOps
Ideal time to start an internship
I started interning at Kaspersky Lab in my second year of my master’s degree, and I am convinced that this is the best time. It seems to me that the first two years of a bachelor’s degree are more like a continuation of school than university. I don’t think that at the age of 18–19 I personally could REALLY understand what I wanted to do and how exactly I could work. At least some objective understanding of oneself as a specialist occurs closer to the third or fourth year. Moreover, if you want to work in your specialty, then it is at this time that the most useful disciplines for you appear, which are undesirable to skip. Therefore, an internship while studying for a master’s degree is just the golden mean.
Experience of combining work and study
It must be admitted that not everything was smooth and there were critical moments – especially in the second year of the master's program, during the preparation of the dissertation. Closer to the summer session, “tails” began to appear, because by that moment I was already frankly “tired” for university and completely immersed myself in work. However, here I was literally saved by my supervisor, who knew that I was working and adjusted the work on my dissertation based on my workload.
In general, an important factor in establishing relationships with teachers and the university as a whole is the emergence of financial independence. When you already earn some money, the possibility of “failing” any discipline ceases to frighten you much.
The same thing, by the way, helped me in my relationship with my parents: they immediately lost their anxiety about combining work and study when my activities began to generate income. It seems to me that, in general, for most parents this is a marker of some kind of success.
My recommendations
Decide on priorities. During the time of combining study and internship, I realized that I would definitely have to choose between these extremes: it would not be possible to sit on two chairs. For example, when preparing to defend your thesis, you clearly understand that at the moment studying is more important, and you ask the lead to reduce the workload. Trying to succeed in both at the same time will only lead to burnout.
Prioritize subjects. It is very important to rank specific academic disciplines in order of their importance to you. For example, at university I paid most attention to English and especially mathematics, because knowledge of various algorithmic calculations in the IT field is extremely useful.
“Student activism makes a difference!”
Denis, MAI, 6th year specialist
Study area: “Robotics”
Internship area: JavaScript development
Ideal time to start an internship
I started my internship in my fifth year: I am sure that there is no point in trying to start working at the beginning of my studies. Personally, in the first few years, my workload was such that it was NEVER possible to combine it. And everyone around me, and not only at the university, also began working during my master’s degree. So I'm not alone in this position 🙂
Experience of combining work and study
The first year of the combination was very difficult: I did not have time either here or there. And in particular, for the first time in all my studies I received a bad mark on the exam – and this was doubly unusual for me. Well, internships while studying are definitely not an option for perfectionists: there will definitely be some problems at the university…
In my case, student activity helped a lot: I was a head student, so many teachers knew me and it was easier to come to an agreement with them. As you know, first you work for networking, and then it works for you 🙂 This is especially important in relation to communication with a researcher: if you have an established relationship with him, this relieves a lot of problems with your studies!
Now it has become easier for me to combine work and study, largely due to the large unloading in pairs, but still sometimes problems arise and work has to be pushed into the background. So, I left for a month of remote work a couple of times due to coursework. Fortunately, the team was loyal to this.
My recommendations
Start building a reputation and connections with teachers from your first year. Human capital, so to speak. Details above 🙂
Be sure to “blow off steam.” If you don’t find time for leisure, you can go crazy after the first session. Personally, regular exercise helps me unwind; Reading books is also a good way to relieve stress, because you abstract yourself as much as possible from your work thoughts. True, I recommend reading strictly fiction, and not some “Computer Networks” :))
“If you don’t delay getting your diploma, everything will go easier”
Ani, MSTU im. Bauman, graduated with a bachelor's degree
Study area: “Software Engineering”
Internship area: JavaScript development
Ideal time for an internship
I started my internship immediately after finishing my third year, so it was easy to juggle the first six months 🙂 I still think that this is the most optimal time to look for a job, truly the golden mean!
Experience of combining work and study
At first, getting an internship was not so difficult: after all, I started working already in my first year (although it was not in my specialty and the working hours were few – and the question above about the “ideal time” was specifically about the internship). So I had a basic understanding of how to keep up with everything. But then work began on my graduation project, and then problems began. I didn’t work on it for a long time, so when I finally got to work, it became VERY difficult to find time for this: everything was spent on the internship. The workload on all sides reached its limit, and in April I even had to take a vacation in order to somehow catch up on my diploma. Now I understand that if I had not delayed writing my thesis, everything would have gone much easier. Well, it’s all due to the classic desire to put everything off until later 🙂 But I realized how important it is to allocate a specific amount of time for a specific task.
At the same time, I never once had the desire to drop out and forget the university like a bad dream! I didn’t want to give up what I started halfway, and in general, higher education is an important thing for me. I told myself: “I definitely need to finish the fourth year…”. I did just that!
My recommendations
Allocate a limited amount of time to tasks. The ephemeral “I’ll try to do it this week” doesn’t work. Today after classes I do tasks from the lead, tomorrow I write a paragraph of my thesis, and on the weekend I do homework in some discipline. The more specific your daily routine is, the better.
Start working with your diploma much EARLY. Of course, you will say that this is obvious, but we all basically learn solely from our mistakes… And I especially recommend actively communicating with your researcher, without hiding from him that you are already working somewhere.
If you are a young reader and know how to close a session without debt and roll out a release without a fire, then register quickly for Kaspersky SafeBoard internship! Recruitment is open from October 2 to October 21, hurry up 🙂 The internship is paid, and at the same time the intern receives food compensation, a free gym and a lot of other benefits.
Well, if you are not quite a young reader, but feel nostalgic for your student years, then we are waiting for the story of your combination (or non-combination) of study and work in the comments!
