Need advice on working while in school

[TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN]

This isn't a question of if I SHOULD work while I go to school, because that's just not an option unless I want to sleep in my car for 2 years or if one of you wants to give me a free home. I'm barely scraping by paycheck to paycheck on just rent, car insurance, and gas, I'm actually short on food money most weeks, so even just cutting back on hours is just not happening. I'm single, I have nobody to help pay my bills, I can't live with family (they're out of state plus nowhere to go anyway). I am the sole supporter of myself 100%.

I'm looking for advice from the people who have done it. Not the ones who had their husband willing to take on the full financial responsibility (sorry), the ones who had no choice at all but to work full time, and maybe even overtime, while while getting through nursing school.

I do have the luxury of being able to pretty much make my own schedule between 8 and 12 hour shifts (has to be 8 or 12), so that's a plus. What advice do you have to make this realistic? How do you do it without work hurting school or school getting in the way of work?

[oceanblue52]

Avoid working the day before clinical, or on days before when you have really big tests. Are you working in a hospital? If so consider picking up as many night/weekend shifts as you can to boost your paycheck from the differential. Working during school is manageable as long as you plan ahead and try to be flexible, as clinical schedules can change last minute. I did 3-8s/2-12s without too much headache.

[NotMyProblem MSN, ASN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN]

Schedule your hours to do an 8-hour shift on Friday evening and 12-hour or 16-hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday. Devote the weekdays and week evenings solely to school and homework/studying. Be sure to utilize that time strictly for studying and rest because you will not be able to from Friday evening through Sunday night. This is how I had to work through my BSN program.

For the ASN, I had a very non-supported husband and although we were still married while I went through the ASN program, I had to live off student loans. I worked one day a week because of cut hours, and sometimes I could only get 4 or 6 hours in...and this was as an LPN working in a hospital setting! Those student loan refunds paid for more that just books and tuition. I had to make car payments, insurance, just day to day living expenses (my mere existence) had to come out of it.

Seeing that I was about to complete that program without his help, he filed for divorce and threw me out of the house the day before my three-day exit exam began. My self-determination helped me survive the most difficult time of my life and reach my goals. So, if you are single, the schedule above should work very well in your favor.