High school has many opportunities available for students ranging from classes, games, and dances to work opportunities. Our school even provides students and their parents a website with new job positions in the area: leydenjobs.org. Although students look forward to spending their own money on food and new clothes, are they really ready to take on another responsibility?

For the students who are willing to try working while managing school, ask yourself “Do I want to work only weekends?” or “Am I willing to work the whole week?” It’s important to find a job that meets your needs, and possibly your schedule. Senior Diego Frausto works only on the weekends making it easier to focus on schoolwork within the week. He would advise students to “work hard on trying to balance your schedule. If work is consuming too much of your life, well you should really focus on school first of all, and if work is consuming it, I would talk with your manager.” Sadly, it seems that adults want their young employees to focus on their job rather than school, so the number of hours a student is required to work starts to pile up. So this means that the hours left in the day to do homework will be spent working after school.

The Work Program at Leyden allows students to leave during the middle of the day, and these people take advantage of the early dismissal to get homework done before putting in more hours at their jobs. Senior Weronika Zaleska is a full time store manager who takes part in this program: “If you don’t schedule out every single aspect of your life,” she said, “it’s going to get really stressful really quick.” After period ⅘, she goes home and starts her homework right away because she knows she isn’t going to do it later when she gets back. Consider adding the work program to next year’s schedule if you have a job or are thinking of getting one.

A decline of student employment over the years started almost 25 years ago, with a 32% youth employment rate, slowly diminishing to 16%. It’s completely understandable that some students can’t handle taking on another responsibility and there’s nothing wrong with that. Leyden students are very involved with their school and extracurricular activities that result in few “free time” hours.