Going to School & Working 3rd Shift (night shift)

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  1. Did you work 3rd shift & go to school? What time did you take classes?

    • 63
      Yes; AM Classes
    • 15
      Yes; PM Classes
    • 10
      Yes; Mixture of online & at school
    • 2
      Yes; Only online
    • 4
      No; Too exhausting to do both
    • 2
      No; I had to change my work schedule
    • 13
      No; I never attempted to try it

17 members have participated

I just received a part-time, 3rd shift job at the hospital. The hours are 11-7AM. I desperately need to get back into school since I took this past semester off. I've never worked night-shift before. For those of you who have...how did you manage school and work at the same time? Did you choose night classes before your shift or take 8AM classes after your shift? :sleep::nurse::unsure: Any advice would be appreciated! :up:

If you do the poll the question, please leave an explanation in a comment as well. :D Thank you!

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Specializes in psych/dementia.

How many times a week are you going to be working and are you going to school part time or full time? Also, are you a night person?

I took all my pre-reqs while working full time night shift with three 12's a week. I'm a night person though so I can make the switch easier than most morning people seem to. I took day classes because that's all that was offered. In my program, I'm working 1 night shift, 12 hours, every other Saturday which is fine, though annoying at times I must admit.

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My schedule will vary but I will be working every other weekend. And it looks like I'll be working 2-3 days per week. I will get a 5 day off stint but I'm not sure how often that occurs.

I would definitely be going to school part-time. I'm thinking no more than 3 classes. I also have a second job that schedules me 4 hours at a time. I may end up quitting that though or only working one day a week.

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Specializes in NICU.

I work 12 hr shifts 630pm-630am on Friday and Saturday. So I Have Sunday as a buffer between work and my morning classes. Fridays are rough because of having classes all day, then working 12 hrs that night. I am up 24 hrs from Friday morning until getting off work Sat. morning. It the only schedule that works so that I don't get off work and go directly to class (especially having a test on Monday....wouldn't be able to think straight).

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I did it both ways. So if I took morning classes then I made sure they were at 8am so I could go straight there. Otherwise I took classes at like

2/3pm so I could go home sleep for awhile, go to class, eat, and then nap before work.

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I work nights, first semester I did a mixture of evening and morning classes. Mornings were brutal and this fall semester I'm doing evening classes only and go to work afterwards it's much better this way!

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I took online classes while working third shift but it was only for gen Ed classes. I work at a hotel so there's a lot of down time at night when I get to do my hw :)

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My schedule will vary but I will be working every other weekend. And it looks like I'll be working 2-3 days per week. I will get a 5 day off stint but I'm not sure how often that occurs.

I would definitely be going to school part-time. I'm thinking no more than 3 classes. I also have a second job that schedules me 4 hours at a time. I may end up quitting that though or only working one day a week.

That sounds doable. Before Nursing school (during my pre-reqs), I took 2-5 classes at a time and worked full time.

The thing is that I went to ratemyprofessor.com and took the best rated (easier) professor who taught at the times that I wanted (mostly weekends for like 3-4 hours at a time). I mostly had to take online classes for the bio and chemistry portions, both because it was more convenient to me and because I work with computers. I picked classes that would have playback lectures that I could listen to over and over.

So basically, is obviously doable because you will get a lot of days off. I only had 3 days off and worked crazy 10 hour shifts starting at 4 .a.m. Also make sure you pair your classes right, one difficult with two easy classes. Or two difficults with one easy, or if they are a bunch of easy classes you can even take four or more.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

I worked the weekends and went to school during the week. It gets tough flip flopping my schedule sometimes but if I know I have to go to bed early that night I will just come home from work, sleep for 3 or 4 hours so I can go back to bed at a decent hour and get up for class in the morning. I work one day during the week. I will go to class in the morning and come home and go to bed right away to catch a nap before work as well.

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Specializes in Neurology.

I work 36 hours over night from 11-730 and am in then ADN program program... I go to lecture @8 am Tuesday and thursday lab wends and data collection Thursday and clinical Saturday... Just do it make it work and get it done don't worry about if you can do it or how much sleep when u will see this person or that one... Just do it get it done then move on with your career

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I work thur, fri sat 7p-7a... Dreading the 24 hr days... But that's all I can do!

Starting jan 2014!! Woot woot the next two years are going to be hard and wonderful all at the same time...

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What time do you take classes? During the day or at night?

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