Should I work part-time as a new pre-med biochemistry student? What we learned
Last August, I was folding clean laundry at our kitchen table at 9 pm when my daughter Lila pushed her 800-page biochemistry textbook aside to show me her new work schedule. Taped in neon pink marker to the textbook’s front cover was the weekly shift list for the campus coffee shop, 10 hours total, mostly early mornings and late weeknights. “I got the job,” she said, stirring a cold coffee that had gone warm while she was highlighting glycolysis pathways. “Twelve an hour plus tips, it’ll cover all my textbooks and gas, I don’t want to take out another grand in student loans just for incidentals.”
I’d spent the previous two weeks scrolling pre-med parent forums, reading all the warnings: first semester biochemistry is the weed-out class, you can’t afford to split your focus, any part-time work will tank your GPA before you even get started. I bit my tongue, though. Lila’s 18, this is her first semester living on campus, and I knew she’d already turned down a higher-paying retail job in town because it would have required a 20 minute drive and fixed weekend shifts that conflicted with her study schedule.
The first month was as messy as I expected. She’d text me pictures of her 7 am shift, still half-asleep behind the espresso machine, then text me again at 10 pm after closing, saying she still had a problem set due the next morning. More than once I drove up to campus to drop off a forgotten textbook or a warm batch of cookies, and found her napping on the common room couch with her highlighter still tucked between the pages of her notes, half-eaten granola bar on the coffee table next to her.
The low point came after her first biochem exam. A coworker called out sick the night before, Lila picked up the shift to cover, so she only got three hours of study time, cramming from 4 am to 7 am before the test. She got a B minus. She called me crying after, sitting in her car outside the dining hall, saying she’d messed up her entire pre-med track before it even started. I drove up to get her ice cream, fully expecting her to hand in her resignation that night. Instead, she sat there licking mint chocolate chip and said she just needed to rearrange her shifts, not quit entirely.
That’s when we started talking through what actually works, instead of relying on the generic “don’t do it” advice I’d read online. First, we agreed on a hard 12 hour a week cap for first semester. Any more than that, and the time lost studying starts to add up, even if the job is convenient. Lila dropped back to 10 hours, which was enough to cover her expenses without eating into all her free time. We also agreed that the job had to stay on campus, no commuting an hour off-campus for a few extra dollars an hour. Lila’s coffee shop was five minutes from her dorm, so she didn’t lose 3 or 4 hours a week just sitting in traffic, which is a hidden cost a lot of new students don’t think about.
Another thing that surprised me: having a structured part-time job actually made Lila a better studier, not a worse one. When she had the whole day free between classes, she’d waste two hours scrolling TikTok or hanging out in the dorm lounge, figuring she had plenty of time to get to her notes. When she only had three hours between the end of class and the start of her shift, she got straight to work, no procrastination. Her academic advisor even told her that admissions committees for medical school don’t look down on part-time work during undergrad—if anything, it shows you can manage multiple priorities, which is a skill you need in med school and as a doctor. A 3.6 with 10 hours a week of work is more impressive than a 3.7 with no work and all expenses covered, he told her.
We also do a monthly check-in, where Lila goes over her upcoming exam schedule and her work schedule, and adjusts as needed. If she has a big week of midterms, she asks her manager to swap her shifts to the next week, and the manager is okay with that because most of the staff are students, so everyone understands. If she’s consistently tired and falling behind, she can quit anytime, no shame attached. It’s not an all-or-nothing decision, it’s something you adjust as you go.
It’s not perfect, of course. Last month she missed my sister’s 40th birthday dinner because she couldn’t swap her shift and had an exam the next morning. Some weeks she still pulls all-nighters to get everything done, and I still worry that she’s burning out. Last week she called me at 8 pm, stressed because a shift ran late and her biochem problem set was due at midnight, so I ordered her a pepperoni pizza to her dorm and she finished it 10 minutes before the deadline.
At the end of first semester, her biochem grade was a B plus, her overall GPA is a 3.6, which is right where she needs it to be for med school applications. She has enough money saved for her spring break trip with her friends, and she hasn’t had to take out any extra student loans. I still worry sometimes when she texts me she’s still at work at 10 pm, but right now, it’s working. She says she’ll reevaluate when she takes organic chemistry next fall, and we’ll go from there. No one answer works for every student, but for us, it wasn’t the disaster everyone warned it would be.
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