My current experience working part-time while pursing a degree is during the school year I am a substitute teacher and I work a retail job. My retail job varies on hours During the school year, I work as often as possible when I have time and whenever there is an opening that works with my schedule. I have been at my retail job for almost six years and this will be my second year subbing. A challenge I have faced when balancing school and work is during the holiday season. This is a busy time of the year and the hours are long. This also happens to be close to the end of the semester for school, and time for finals. This past holiday season was tough for me because I just went back to school after not being in education for four years and I lost the flow of being in school and balancing other things. I had a lot of assignments to do and an exam that was over everything we had learned that semester. I also had to travel to take this exam and schedule a time to take it at a proctor location. This caused me a lot of stress, but I over came it by using my Sundays and doing class work before or after work when in order not to fall behind. This worked for me because when I work sub as well, I had periods where I did not have students so I used those times to also do school work. I had to make sure and block out time to do my work in order for me not to become overwhelmed with school and work. I also made sure to use my off days to study. It is not possible to do any work while working at my retail job, so it was very important to do any work I could around work. Another thing I did before I went back to school I tried a class that was online, and had only certain times for zoom class. This helped as well because the college I am attending I have to travel to. This cleared up more time for me to help balance out schoolwork and working. It is important to me to work because I am paying for school out of pocket, and I also want to do well in my classes.