Do you have a mini-job? How do you manage it?

[Donello]

Hi,

I am going to start my Electrical Engineering degree next year. Studying in Germany is free, in other words, you only pay around 200 $ as a semester fee and that's it. No tuition ...etc I will also get a student load called "Bafög" which is roughly 650 $ a month to cover living costs. The city I am heading to complete my degree in is not that cheap and the 650 $ will probably not be enough and therefore I should get a Mini-Job.

Do you work alongside studying ? I know that most students do but considering an engineering degree, I just think it requires more studying-time than other majors and am a bit concerned about this.

I would appreciate sharing your situation, this way I can see it from different points of view. Also, please share your experience about how you organize your time and keep it balanced.

 

[WWGD]

Hi,

I am going to start my Electrical Engineering degree next year. Studying in Germany is free, in other words, you only pay around 200 $ as a semester fee and that's it. No tuition ...etc I will also get a student load called "Bafög" which is roughly 650 $ a month to cover living costs. The city I am heading to complete my degree in is not that cheap and the 650 $ will probably not be enough and therefore I should get a Mini-Job.

Do you work alongside studying ? I know that most students do but considering an engineering degree, I just think it requires more studying-time than other majors and am a bit concerned about this.

I would appreciate sharing your situation, this way I can see it from different points of view. Also, please share your experience about how you organize your time and keep it balanced.

This is what has worked for me: I am thinking along the lines of the 20-80 rule, which I think applies to your situation; specifically, you may have regular times of the day at which you are most mentally sharp and productive. Maybe you can observe what these times are, what your slower times are and schedule your studying for the sharp hours , schedule work for slower hours . Also I would say find time to exercise, which will help you in terms of mental sharpness and with overall fitness, help you sleep.
I think also carefully planning your week on tasks that need to be done and how to do them ( I used ideas from a class I took on project management, a side class in Database): make an assessment of what needs to be done, together of what needs to be done: what are the trouble areas , easier parts. Then once you sit down to study you have a clear idea of what you need to do . You can use " dead time" like travel time either reassessing your tasks (breaking them down into manageable parts) or mentally reviewing the material. Of course this is not foolproof, but helps cut down on misspent time and efforts.

Viel Gluck !

 

[Choppy]

I don't know much about the German system, but my experience (Canadian) is that even in demanding programs it's possible to hold down a part-time job.

The main issue is one of balancing study time and work time. You'll have to be careful about what you commit to in terms of hours at first. One trap that's easy to fall into is committing so many hours per week based on your experiences over the first couple weeks of school and then running into a time crunch later in the semester when assignments are due and you have finals to study for. To counter this you can look for a position that has flexible hours or simply try to avoid over-committing yourself. There are some jobs that allow you to study while you're at work as well - one example is a static security position.

 

[Donello]

one example is a static security position.

I will put this kind of jobs into my consideration.

 

[jack476]

Tutoring was a pretty natural job for me when I was in EE. As long as you maintain decent enough grades, you should easily be able to tutor low-level math courses like college algebra or precalculus within the first year. Plus it will keep you sharp in the calculus 1 and 2 stuff that might not start appearing in your EE classes until a year after you've taken the calculus, like series and trig identities.