Part-time jobs during university

Do you think part-time jobs during university help prepare students for their professional careers? Why or why not?

Yes. In cutting edge technologies, many founders started their business during the university. As you might know, Microsoft, Facebook and other famous enterprises were established in Harvard University. The success was caused by their founder who was a genius. However, I’m sure that inconvenience and free university days incubated amazing idea that no one came up.

Speaking of myself, I had worked for the laboratory as a programmer during university. The reason why I started working is very simple. It was a shortcut of my carrier. The part-time job game me more than I had expected.

What is a difference between writing program in lectures in the university and writing it for earning money? I think it’s had to find a significant difference between them. However, my way of learning was changed dramatically. Getting a certain purpose make me consider it deeply. Until I started working, my concern is whether I’m possible to pass exam in high score. I had never had questions nor didn’t try researching it deeply.

The biggest things that I learned through my part time job, might be break through skills. Though getting money was out of my scope, I thought my result should have more than worth of my earnings. I tried writing program without bugs. At the laboratory, I shared a single computer with researchers and engineers. Once the bug detected, I had to wait to re-use till next day. It is hard to believe today, but it was very common two decades ago.

Generally, it is very easy to find programing language text books. On the other hand, there are very rare textbook about programing skill. Even though I got such kind of books, it is another thing to fix the bugs that I faced. The first things I did is to ask the professional engineer who worked for the laboratory give me some advices. It was tough work for me because I never had talked with older people who are neither my family nor teachers.

Fortunately one of engineer treated me as a engineer not a beginner. The experience gave me a policy as a professional that the true engineer share the knowledge with anyone.


If a university student were two minds about a part time job, I’ll recommend starting it. The job reminds the importance of learning in university, changes the way of studying and definitely gives them unforgettable experience that is their polestar in the future.