How much is too much?

How do you tell if school/classes plus part time jobs is too much? Right now I'm looking at taking 18 hours of classes in the fall and planning to work about 21 hours. How do you determine how many classes and hours at a job are too much and would interfere with getting good grades and mental health? I know each person has a different level, but how do you determine what your's is? I just don't want to reach that level by going into a crisis.

It can be very difficult until you try, but generally it is about being in tune with your body and emotions. If you start to feel yourself getting tired or weary, more emotional or frustrated than normal, it can be a sign that you are overworked and starting to burn out.

Effectively, your study/work combination will be the equivalent of just over a full-time job. And that can be a lot of work, especially if you still have assignments and studying outside of that time.

The other way to look at it is to work out a map of your week. I learnt to do this in a time management seminar. It is normally done in a table but will try to outline the basics here the best I can:

There are 168 hours in a week.
If you get 8 hours sleep a night (recommended), and take out 5 hours daily (seen as an average) for personal care, cooking, cleaning, eating etc. that leaves 77 hours. And these are just estimates so you may need to modify it for your own routines.

From there, attempt to map your current activities - travel, clases, work, study/assignment time, leisure time, family time etc. and see what is left.

It seems like a very rigid way to do it, but you very quickly can see how the hours add up. If you find that you won't have enough time to get things done easily, allowing for enough leisure/rest time to stay focused and a few 'spare' hours for things that come up unexpectedly or take longer, then you probably need to re-evaluate whether you can take on that much.

I really hope this is making sense! For me it was a great tool but is hard to explain like this.

Looking online, I found an online calculator - http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/TMInteractive.html

They aren't the whole solution, as only you know what you can cope with and when you are getting overwhelmed, but they can be useful to realistically manange your time.

dolphingirl, have you been doing school & work and now you're just upping your credit hours? or are you just starting with either school or the job?

I did both school & work for several years, I have to admit I had my ups and downs. If you're just starting school, I would take it slow and do one less class than you are planning, especially if you are already worried about it. 18 credits is a lot!

Also try to make sure you have a balanced course load, with some classes that are easy for you or more interesting. I also like to schedule myself an hour or two break in between classes for study time. This will force me to hit the library and get some work done, whereas if I wait till after work/class I will find any excuse not to study.

Good luck!

From my experience, that would be a lot to do, unless you can study at work. When I used to teach at the college level, the assumption was that students needed to work 3 hours outside of class for every 1 hour in class. Do the math! What kinds of grades are you aiming for? I always went for all A's (and only made 3 B's in college), and I found 18 hours in itself plus being active in groups on campus was taxing.

Two school years ago I took 19 and 20 credits. Last fall I took 16 and worked 6 hours a week and had a crisis and in the Spring I took 15 credits while working 15 hours a week.
So, Laralula, I'm upping credits and work. I've also found that I'm somewhat the opposite of you when it comes to studying. For me, most of my assignments require more than an hour for reviewing a chapter or an assignment, so I feel more tempted to goof off. I also go to a small college, so for classes that aren't gen eds, there is typically only one section/time. All of my classes will interest me except the economics gen ed. 4 credits are tough with a lab too and 7 are "medium", 4 are "easy", and the last 3 credits, I've got no clue what to expect. They have reinstated our ability to do homework and study at one job. I do plan on getting all A's of some type. Once I get some money saved up for next semester/year and if its overwhelming I might just quit my 2nd job. I've "mapped" it out and it looks do-able, but there's still the online class and I'm horribly afraid of a crisis. I'm just overwhelmed looking at this trying to figure out if I will be overwhelmed. I wish there was a simple way to figure this out and to know before hand.

It can be really hard to work out Does your college allow a few weeks grace with adding/removing classes? I believe that most do. If so, i would suggest starting with the 18 if you think you can cope and have a look at your assignments and study load. Near the end of the grace period if you are already behind, overwhelmed or feel you can't keep the pace you are doing then consider cutting back?

Also, remember to consider what classes you will be signing up for. Remember that some will be more demanding than others--and think about the type of work you are planning to do. Some jobs are more demanding/stressful than others. Can you recall what might have been factors that led to your crisis that one semester?