Time management changes with part-time internship

This is a guest blog by Alecia Kissel, HR/Recruiting intern at Milliner & Associates, LLC in Indianapolis.

Since I juggle school, Speech Team, work and everything else college students are busy with, I figured I was already pretty skilled with time management.

That was until I came back for the fall semester going from 40 hours a week to 14 hours a week. I felt like a hamster running on a wheel in overdrive. Going, going, going but never really getting anywhere. The struggle is real.

This hourly transition challenged me for more than one reason. Being at work all day, every day over the summer was my life. Now I have to balance that work with school. If there are stages of senioritis, I must be at stage 5. The summer showed me what it would be like to be in the real world, and I’m ready for it. Come the first week of school, it felt like there was a malfunction in the well-oiled machine that was my work life.

Along with finding the right balance within my life, I began to feel behind at work. There were about 50 people who submitted online applications after a summer job fair, and that number was growing every day. I had to schedule interviews for all of them, slowly chipping away at the amount of applicants. However, as I spent time calling them, the number of resumes in the Hire Inbox grew into the triple digits. Needless to say, I never wanted to leave work because there was so much to do!

Nicole had to pull the reigns back a bit from time to time giving me advice. She told me that there will always be work to do, and we can’t let that anxiety get in the way of us doing our job well. It reminded me of her advice from the summer: run your day, don’t let it run you. I have less time to do my work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be productive in the best possible way during the short mornings before class in the afternoon.

Finding the right balance between work, school and my personal life has been difficult, but it ultimately helps me grow as a person. It’s hard to grapple with that sentiment. Communication really is the key in time management; if I am behind, I don’t have to feel ashamed to let Nicole know. That’s the great part about the work environment I’m in. We all work together to get back on track, turning the struggle into success.