Effects of juggling school, work and family essay

Nowadays the phenomenon of juggling work, school and family is very widespread among young people. It is caused by different life situations. Rapid development of our world demands from us more flexibility, mobility and fitness to new situations. In order to be abreast of the times we should be aware of all innovations, be competent and be able to allocate our time. Many of us want to be successful and to gain a great deal. However, what does it mean to be successful? Does it mean to have a lot of money, to be famous all over the world, or to make a brilliant career? Every person chooses his or her own model of a successful life. People set different goals in front of themselves and try to achieve them. Still, there are different ways to gain your ends. Some people work their way through, taking no notice of others; they are unscrupulous and use all opportunities to make headway. Others knuckle down to work, devote all their free time to their career and thus attain their objects. There are such people that try to come to the top in all spheres of their life: education, work, family life. They do not want to do everything in turn but try to juggle these three spheres. It appears that there are both positive and negative effects of such juggling. But first of all let’s consider the causes of this phenomenon.

Very often hard living conditions make people start working while going to school, in order to earn a living. The necessity to help one’s family forces a teenager to look for a part-time job. There are also cases when young people start working because they do not have enough pocket money for their needs. Thus, in order to meet their constantly growing requirements, young people decide to work.

Moreover, we should consider the cases when people juggle work and studies, when they are grown-up and already have a family. Nowadays the number of students who do not enter the college after graduating from high school increases while the importance of college education grows from year to year. College education becomes a springboard for the future work and aspirations. Studying in college, communicating with successful people, who have already achieved their aims and who are deeply interested in their activity, one also aspires to discover something new, to make one’s own contribution into the science, to learn more and more. Thus, education in college makes people more mature and more interested in what they are doing. It might be just an intermediate stage in their life-long leaning, which will help them better understand their abilities and aspirations in a chosen sphere of life. Therefore, in order to get a good job, a person would have to make up for lost knowledge and would have to combine studies and work. By that time many of them would already have families and children. Thus, a person has to juggle everything.

So, what effect might such juggling have on a person’s life? On the one hand, due to a rigid schedule and a large number of duties, people learn to use their energy sparingly and to allocate their time. Trying to balance studies, work and family responsibilities, people learn to find compromises, to establish a priority and to act in the conditions of limited time. Very often they have to take quick decisions, resorting to an analysis of a situation. On the other hand, such way of life does have pernicious effect on the health of a person. Being under constant pressure, a person has no time to stop and to have a rest. Thus, he or she might face such problems as forgetfulness, chronic fatigue syndrome, sleeplessness, mood swings together with decreased social interaction. Trying to succeed in all spheres, people often overestimate their abilities. So, when they do not achieve their goals in all fields they feel depressed and anxious. It seems to them that their life remains unsettled and at the same time the guilt for problems at home and at work might lead to a serious depression.

In order to avoid such result it is advised to do everything in turn. “One recipe for success is clear everywhere ”” work hard in secondary school, graduate from university, do not get involved with the law, do not have children before the late 20s, and marry or cohabit with someone at least as well educated as yourself” (Cook and Furstenberg 21).  However, it is obvious that juggling work, school and family is very widespread nowadays. Therefore, sociologists and psychologists recommend reducing the pressure by sharing duties at home, introducing a family calendar, arranging affairs by phone calls and e-mails if possible.

To make a conclusion, the discussed above problem is urgent and requires much attention from scholars. However, the most important thing, which influences on the effect of juggling several social roles, is the ability to see the situation in the proper perspective and to estimate one’s forces correctly.