Author: Claudia G.

Guest post by JHU Alumnus Anand Narayan, ’04. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2011, and currently works at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Many people hold the view that there is an irreconcilable conflict between work and academics—the more time one spends working, the less time one spends studying for classes and engaging in extracurricular and social activities. Put crudely, the more you work, the more your academic and social life will suffer. Naturally, many students view work as an unwanted intrusion on their precious free time. For parents who can afford to finance their children’s education, in what ways can working benefit their student?

Before the beginning of my freshman year, my parents and I harbored similar concerns—I sincerely questioned whether or not I would be able to work and take classes at the same time. In my situation though, I wasn’t able to decide whether or not I wanted to work. I knew that I would have to work in order to help finance my education.

I began to work in the month of June, approximately 3 months before my first day of classes. I worked throughout the entire summer, 2 days a week at the Student Employment Office and 3 days at the Center for the Social Organization of Schools. After registering for my fall class­es, I filled up practically all of the remain­ing time in my weekly schedule with approximately 10 hours of work.

The semester began in early September and I began my new work schedule. For the first few weeks, many of my fears seemed to come to fruition; I slept irregu­larly and performed poorly in my classes. With time however, things began to change.

Because I had to devote time every week to work, I began to organize my time in a way that I never had done before. I thor­oughly scrutinized every hour of my day and plotted out my schedule weeks in advance. I began to use the hours when I was not in class or work much more effi­ciently, with focus and determination.

Thanks to my newfound discipline, I was able to adjust to my classes within a few weeks. The workload associated with class­es no longer appeared as daunting and my grades began to improve.

At the Office of Student Employment Services, I handed out paychecks, answered payroll questions, and helped Homewood students find part time jobs. With 10 hours of work in between classes, I was able to break up the monotony of a back-to-back class schedule. In doing so, I have been able to learn about different cultures from a diverse group of stu­dents and staff members, make a lot of friendships with student/staff members, and gain a lot of profes­sional experience in the process.

My work at the Student Employment office was extremely helpful to me in finding my second job as a Research Assistant at the Department of Radiology. In part due to the favor­able recommendation of the Director of Student Employment Services, I was accepted in a radiological research group, even though as a freshman I had no research experi­ence. At the Radiology Department, I helped conduct studies evaluating the clinical applicability of film digi­tizers in general radiology and mam­mography. One of the most reward­ing aspects of my work at the Radiology department over the last 2 1/2 years is the fact that. I have been involved with every single aspect of a medical research study from the arduous task of writing a grant proposal to the satisfaction of publishing and presenting a paper. In doing so, I have had the opportunity to get an in depth look at medicine from clini­ cal researchers and technicians. These experiences have piqued my interest in academic medicine and have given me valuable insights into scientific research and the field of Radiology.

With the passage of time, I began to participate in a variety of other activi­ties including volunteering at soup kitchens, local hospitals, political cam­paigns, etc.. These activities have enriched my undergraduate experi­ence and have given me the opportu­nity to learn about and give back to the community.

I have also been invited the last two years to speak to parents and students at Orientation on behalf of the Office of Student Employment Services. The concerns I heard from parents and students were familiar ones—Is there enough time in the week to work? Will I be able to work and have a social life? Will my son/daughter have time to work and do well in classes? These were the same con­cerns that my parents and I had at the beginning of my freshman year.

But I no longer harbor any of those concerns. Working has made me become a much more mature, focused student who is much more capable of handling numerous com­mitments at the same time. The numerous activities I have participat­ed in, in turn, have made my experi­ence here at Hopkins varied and interesting.

Guest post written by JHU Alumnus David A. Lefcourt, ’03. He was named the JHU Student Employee of the Year and received the NEASEA Award for being the Maryland State Student Employee of the Year in 2002. David is currently employed by SIGMET Weather Radar Data Systems in Westford, MA.  

Student employment provides students with an opportunity to learn things outside the classroom that directly enhance their in-class experience. Moreover, it offers the opportunity to apply what is learned in the classroom in a real world work situation. This symbiotic relationship truly enhanced my educational experience at Hopkins.

In the fall of 2001, I was enrolled as an undergraduate in a technical communications class at Johns Hopkins University. The final project was to write a proposal to improve one facet of campus life. Having always been interested in technology, I wanted to propose that every course have a web site. It was through my research for that project that I learned of a new center on campus geared towards connecting education and technology, the Center for Educational Resources (CER). I met with Candice Dalrymple, Assoc. Dean and Director of the CER. Thanks to her, I walked away from that meeting realizing that properly enhancing education with technology is a complex endeavor, and that requiring a course to have a web site might not necessarily add value to the student’s experience. Nevertheless, I was more intrigued than ever in the work that that the center was embarking upon.

Later that semester, I inquired about student employment opportunities in the field of educational technology with the hopes of working with Candice at the CER and was hired in January of 2003. Over the course of the last two years, the CER has grown tremendously and has helped to enhance the experience of students and faculty in many courses across the campus. During my employment with the CER I always believed that being a student employee was just as valuable as my academic endeavors. Some might question my reasoning — wasn’t I at Hopkins to learn… shouldn’t my courses come first? My priority was to learn and learning can happen in many different arenas. During my employment with the CER, I learned to work with different groups of people and handle many different situations. I was a little short for time every now and again, but because I had responsibilities to the CER and to my academics, I felt as though I managed my time more effectively than if I was involved in one and not the other.

Some people might have this perception of a student job as being mundane or a place where some extra studying can be completed, but in my situation and I am sure in countless others, there is an overlap of the learning process. Things I was learning at the CER and in my classes were transcending the boundaries of “school” and “work”. Specifically, I was involved with CER’s Technology Fellowship program — a mini-grant program that partners students and faculty to enhance a course with technology. The greatest part of being involved in this program was learning about all of the innovative ideas that students and faculty created to enhance their courses. One of the Technology Fellowship projects was to create a geographic information system (GIS) tutorial. I had never heard of GIS, but after the graduate students working on the project explained how GIS provides a graphic representation of data using some type of mapping system, I was intrigued and wanted to see if I could use it in one of my sociology classes. It just so happened that the next semester, in my Environmental Sociology class, I was able to use a GIS to investigate whether the racial makeup of a neighborhood determined the proximity of environmental hazards in Baltimore City. I used what I had learned at work to directly enhance my learning experience in the classroom.

In addition to a job expanding academic opportunities, things learned in the classroom can enhance a work environment as well. For example, during the fall semester of 2001, I was enrolled in an IT management course. Instead of focusing on the bits and bytes of technology, the course emphasized how to properly manage technology to produce the best results in efficiency and/or productivity. That course taught me about total cost of ownership and managing hardware and software assets, and that knowledge prompted me to create a technology plan for the CER to assist with it’s short-term technology planning.

The most important part of my experience was working with those University professionals who fostered the development of the relationship between my work and my classes. Student employers offer students an opportunity for growth and development, which complements their experience in the classroom. In my case, all of the people with whom I worked were my colleagues, my friends, and most importantly, my teachers. I cannot emphasize enough the value of opportunities offered through student employment that directly support academic studies and enhance a students overall college experience.