Script #2 (Philip, Justin, Pavi) How Do You Manage Working While Being in College?

Script #2 (Philip, Justin, Pavi) How Do You Manage Working While Being in College? J: So Phil, you're going to college full-time at ISU, and working part-time as a salesman. Do you think it's hard to do? How do you manage your classes, studies, and job? P: Life can be complex while in college. College life is fun and exciting, but it's also very busy and stressful sometimes. I love going to class, living the college lifestyle, and learning. At ISU, most of my time gets taken up every day doing all my graduate work. It's hard to work at a stressful sales job with being a graduate student. After I finish reading, writing papers, doing research, and going to classes on campus, I'm very tired. Then, I have to go to a busy sales job. D: So what degree are you getting at ISU? P: I'm getting the MA in applied linguistics and TESOL. J: And what do you want to do? P: I want to teach English abroad, and travel to several countries. D: How many classes are you taking now? P: I'm a full-time graduate student, and I have to take at least three classes per semester. That means nine credits. Graduate school is very busy, and this is why full-time status means less credits than undergraduate, which is generally twelve. J: So you're taking three classes? P: Yeah. I'm taking a class in computers in applied linguistics, another class in literacy methods for non-native speakers of English, and a class in TESOL methods and materials. J: So with three classes, you've very busy. P: Yes, very. D: I'm also in graduate school, and I know it's very challenging. I'm getting my Ph. D. in aerospace engineering. So Phil and I are both very busy every day! J: What do some of your days look like? P: I have classes Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On some of these days, I also have to go work in sales before or after class. During the rest of the days of the week, I may or may not work. It all depends on the needs of my job. J: How many hours per week do you work? P: I work about thirty hours a week. I study for many hours every week as well, and I try to balance my sales job, graduate work, and social life as well as I can. It can be hard to stay motivated for college during extremely busy weeks. When a person has to do group projects, write papers, read posted articles online, and have meetings with professors, life becomes somewhat crazy. Then, when you add an external job onto your life, it can be very draining and exhausting. I’m sometimes so tired from class that I find it hard to work in sales. The opposite is true, too. Sometimes I find it hard to finish papers or other things that I need to do, because my job has made me so tired. I need to find a balance every week to maintain my work and sanity in both areas. J: Wow! That sounds really hectic! D: Phil is telling the whole truth here! Graduate school is busy! J: So what is a Monday like? D: It’s like torture. P: Yes, I agree! Well, Mondays are usually busy. I study in the morning and early afternoon before I go to my English 510 class, which meets from 2:10 until 3:30. The class usually consists of a lecture or a student presentation, and then we have lab work. The class meets in a computer lab in Ross Hall on the east campus. D: What kinds of readings do you have? P: Almost all of the readings have to do with Computers in Applied Linguistics. We students call it CALL for short. The readings are very technical, detailed, theoretical, and occasionally more practical. The challenge of CALL is understanding computers and the applications available for languages. Quite a bit of research is being put into CALL today. D: Are Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur examples of CALL? P: Yeah, they are. Both utilize computers and language-learning applications. It’s very helpful to use computers for language learning. Since computers can do so much at one time, there can be pictures with text, a video with a script, an online film with captions, and much more. Today, it’s possible to learn languages more easily than in the past. It’s possible also to teach yourself languages more readily on your own, if you have the determination and the motivation to stay on task. The computer can be your instructor in many ways. J: So what kinds of lab work do you have? P: We work with all kinds of software for educational purposes. Since most of us are becoming teachers of English to speakers of other languages, we all made an Excel grading and attendance management project. It’s necessary to keep track of students and their assignments, and Excel can track all of a teacher’s workload pretty well. Anyway, we also made a Camtasia video project, a GoAnimate video, and a series of web pages with Adobe Dream Weaver. Some of us graduate students are making iBooks on the Mac computers. All these projects have been pretty fun, but some have been more difficult than others. D: What was a more difficult project? P: I think the web page was hard. I don’t like working with visual interfaces, so I chose to program the whole project using HTML and CSS. I have a technical college degree and lots of experience in a tech job, and both have been helpful for this class. But programming a web site has its own challenges. J: What kinds of challenges? P: A person has to have a lot of knowledge about computer codes, directories, structure, and IT to make a web page work properly. Also, knowing how a server works, and how to upload your page is extremely useful. And anytime a person makes changes to a page, those changes have to be uploaded as well. So, it can be difficult to make a web page work well. D: And it has to be designed nicely, so people will like the appearance and the layout. P: True, the appearance and layout are very important. We have to make web pages appealing for people. The content is important beyond all else, but it’s nice to have a pleasing set of colors and a cool layout. J: So, to go back to balancing your life, what is a Wednesday like? P: Wednesdays can be busy. I have lots of class to do on those days. Recently, my schedule became even busier than normal. I had my CALL class in the afternoon, a classroom observation for English 99R afterward, and then my three-hour long English 524 class until eight o’clock. I had two consecutive Wednesdays like this, and they were hard days. I found that it was important to sleep well the night before and stay energized, diligent, and positive throughout the day. I love to learn and make progress in linguistics, but it can be hard. D: That’s the college life! J: Yeah it is! I know, I’m in college too, and it’s very busy every day! P: But all our learning, going to class, doing projects, writing papers, and working outside of class will be worth it in the end! J: It sure will!