(FINAL) Podcast #1-Research & Reflections

The podcast "The Reality of Student Workers" explores the challenges faced by student workers balancing jobs and education. The hosts, Jimmy and Ritika, share their own experiences and discuss the research they conducted. They found that many student workers face long hours, financial stress, and struggle to keep up with their education. They highlight the importance of amplifying student voices and reveal that most student jobs don't align with their future careers. They also discuss issues of flexibility, anxiety, and the impact of financial need on students' well-being. Additionally, they address the decrease in financial aid and the need for students to work long hours to cover expenses. Welcome to our podcast, The Reality of Student Workers, where we explore the challenges, resilience and voices of student workers navigating jobs and education. My name is Jimmy Mencia and I'm a research intern with the LSRP, but more importantly, I'm also a student worker myself, and I have been since I was 16 years old when I got my first job in high school, which is why I decided to partake in this research. It hits close to home. Like so many others balancing school and work, I face the long hours, financial stress, and the struggle to keep up with my education while making ends meet. I'm Ritika and I'm also an intern with LSRP. Over the past several months, we've been diving deep into the experiences of student workers in Los Angeles through surveys, interviews, and data analysis. Today, we want to share what we've learned, the stories that we've uncovered, and why this research matters. This project has been truly eye-opening for me. Even though I'm a student worker myself, seeing all this data laid out really enforced how widespread these issues are. Yeah, same here. I think one of the most powerful parts of this research was hearing the personal stories behind the data. It's one thing to see numbers, but when a student tells you that they had to skip meals because they couldn't afford groceries or that they missed a career fair because they were stuck at work, it really hits differently. And in the next episode, we'll bring in a student worker guest to hear their first-hand experiences. And in our third and final episode, we'll be going over recommendations with fellow student workers from the UCLA Labor Center. But for now, let's start from the beginning. Why did we decide to do this research in the first place? I think one of the biggest motivators for this research was recognizing that a lot of working students are struggling, but their struggles often go unnoticed. There's this expectation that students just figure it out between balancing school, work, and financial responsibilities without much institutional support. Exactly. And for many of us, working isn't a choice. It's a necessity. What's interesting is that while some assume student jobs are just for extra cash, our research shows that for a lot of students, work is about survival, covering rent, tuition, groceries, even supporting their families. Right, and that connects to why we took a participatory research approach, because student workers are the experts in their own experiences. They don't just need to be studied from the outside. That's why we centered their voices, or our voices, throughout this project. Exactly. We chose this approach because it emphasizes the importance of working with student workers, rather than studying them from the outside. It recognizes that they bring valuable insights and experiences that should guide the research. That really shaped how we approached this project. Absolutely. Instead of just analyzing numbers, we wanted to amplify student voices. So let's talk about what they told us. We surveyed 139 students from different colleges in the LA County and conducted 26 interviews. We found that nearly half of student workers work between 16 to 30 hours per week, on top of a full course load. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know, me personally, I work about 10 to 15 hours a week, but I'm also taking on 19 units, which is, I have, I'm taking four classes right now, and between my internship, my job, my four classes, the two clubs that I'm in and have leadership positions in, and also the lab that I'm in, if I were to take on more hours in my job, I wouldn't have any time left for academics. That relates to another point that we learned in our study, which is that almost a third of the students take on more than 15 units per term, meaning they're essentially working full time, as the last data point suggested, between school and their job, and that raises a really big issue, which is how does all of that impact their academics, especially when you consider how many are working in jobs that don't match their major? Yeah, I can really agree with both these data points. I work around 20 hours per week, and this quarter I'm taking 16 units, but it really is a big juggle for me, having to work these 20 hours, because these 20 hours are resources that I'm missing out on, which could be applied to my coursework, finding future career internships and stuff like that. One of the most telling findings was that only one in four students said their jobs were directly related to their future careers. That means most student workers are in positions that don't align with their long-term goals, but they have no choice because they need the income. Yeah, that resonates with me as well, because I work in a department that's completely unrelated to the career goals I have. I am pre-law, and I don't think I've ever had a job opportunity directly related to the kind of work I want to do in the future. While my job has taught me a lot of skills to have in the workplace, I don't have any actual entry-level experience in the career I want to go into. And in a professional pre-track, like pre-law, a lot of the entry-level jobs require previous entry-level experience. So it's kind of like starting so far from behind. And we also found that while there are these career-building resources students have access to, even though their jobs don't connect to their field of study, nearly a quarter of students have never accessed these resources that universities claim are available. So some said that their work schedule made it impossible. Others mentioned a more structural barrier, like lack of support from campus services or feeling like gate-kept out of certain jobs. Yeah, and I can really speak to this for me especially. There's been so many times where I get an email from UCLA talking about a career building fair or a resume workshop, and then it's like, oh, but I'm scheduled for work that day, and I can't really like call out because I need my job to support myself. I also work for the university, and I'm also on the pre-law track, but my job doesn't necessarily align with what I want to do in the future. I would say one thing that does align is having to speak with people because I work for housing and hospitality, so gaining people skills is obviously a plus. But I talk with my peers, and they're out here getting internships in the legal field, or they're working for a law firm, but it's like, I have to get this job because I knew I needed money right away, and it was kind of like my only option. So that brings me to another critical point, flexibility. So many student workers told us that they rely on flexible hours to stay on top of their coursework and exams, but they often don't get it from their employers. In fact, only 18% said their schedules are always accommodated for school commitments, while 12% said they rarely or never got flexibility. That's a huge problem, especially during finals or midterms. Yeah, for me, I know that I'm very, very fortunate in the sense that my employer puts academics first, but if I didn't have that, I would be so much more behind than I already am. I already have to ask professors for extensions for all the things I have going on, and I already have to take shifts off for midterms or to do commitments for other clubs in there, internships, and so I can imagine if I had a boss that wasn't okay with me taking off for the other commitments that I had, or like skipping shifts, it would be so much more stressful, which leads to another point, actually, that 55% of students reported feeling anxiety about balancing work and school most or all the time. That's something I relate to another level. I myself suffer from anxiety, and a large part of it stems from financial burdens. My hours aren't really consistent all the time, and then it becomes this whole thing where it's like, oh, you know, but I have to pay for my tuition, I have to pay for food, especially when, you know, it's midterm or finals week, and I'm still working those 20 hours, maybe even more, and it just becomes this whole loop during midterms and final seasons, especially when having to balance work and school. And, you know, this also, it's not just about emotional health, it's also about physical health. We also found that 70% of students said financial need forced them to work while sick, and only 45% actually took a sick day off, so student workers are sacrificing their well-being just to stay afloat. Yeah, this actually happened to me, like, a few weeks ago. So I went to work, even though I was very, very sick, because even though this is a minimum wage job, every shift I have counts, and the expenses of living in a place like Los Angeles are so high that, like, to get my groceries and even, like, to take care of my mental health, I have to, just to pay my therapy bills, I have to, like, work so many extra hours, and I've actually had to skip therapy because I couldn't pay the bill at some point. Even though I had so much stress to deal with between, like, school and work and all the other commitments, the amount that I made just wasn't enough to cover bills that high every week. At the end of the day, there's only so much work I can skip to take care of myself. My financial needs have taken a huge priority over my other needs, which brings us to, like, another really big point about financial aid, which is that in our survey, 63% of participants said that they received some form of financial aid, but of those students, over a quarter reported that their aid had decreased since they started school, and 62% said that it doesn't fully cover their needs, forcing many to work long hours just to compensate for that gap. Yeah, and these points especially hit really close to home because the only reason why I'm able to even go to college in the first place is because of financial aid, you know, FAFSA. I come from a low-income background, and so growing up, I didn't really have a lot of financial resources, and college was always something that was kind of out of reach for me, and this was mainly due to financial constraints. And, you know, now I'm so grateful that I'm the first in my family to be able to attend college and even finish high school, so it's honestly a blessing to be able to receive financial aid. But this doesn't necessarily mean that it covers everything. I definitely agree that financial aid has lowered in recent years, especially with rising costs, and it's just so scary to think about because if it weren't for these, you know, government institutions, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be recording this podcast and sharing my story, which I think is super important. Not just my story, but the stories of other student workers. Me, personally, my financial aid does not cover everything, and whatever it doesn't cover, it's not like I can just, you know, ask my parents to help me out financially. It's kind of like I'm on my own, and I have to leverage my own financial resources. If there's any outstanding balances for my tuition, I'm the one to pay it, not my parents. And that's just something I've lived with my entire life. This financial strain, we've also found that it leads oftentimes to missed opportunities. One of the points that was really eye-catching for us was how 30% of students said extended deadlines would be the most helpful accommodation, but only 10% said all their professors provided accommodations. This means that schools aren't doing enough to support working students. Yeah, accommodations from professors is one of the biggest obstacles that I've faced. Even just as we record this right now, I got a Canvas notification from one of my TAs about an attendance policy because yesterday I had to miss discussion because I had office hours for something else, and the attendance policy was that we can only miss one class unexcused. So I had my first absence early in the quarter when I had the flu that I was talking about before. So that was my first absence, and the second one yesterday to go to office hours. So now I have to write a paper to make up for that attendance, but I already have a paper due tomorrow, and I already have another assignment due on Monday, and so now I have a third paper to write on top of that. And I think flexible policies like this are so, so crucial, and professors a lot of times are not as accommodating as they advertise themselves to be. I know there was this one class I took, I think last quarter, where my laptop broke the day that I had an essay due. So I emailed my professor from my phone, and I was like, can I get an extension because my laptop broke, and I need to get a new laptop because it's quite old, like it's already been repaired once, like I need to buy a new laptop. And well, first of all, that already took such a toll on my bank account, having to buy a new laptop, like completely unexpectedly. And second, my professor had responded with, like, what about the device you emailed me from right now, or like what about that device in the background, which was my iPad in the background, and this was like a 15-page paper. This was like something so out of my control, the fact that my laptop had, like, shattered. And that, like, wasn't something my professor was willing to accommodate, and they were quite frankly a little bit rude about. And there's just been, like, so many instances where I've been, like, really sick, or like I've had something else, and I needed, like, an extension, or like some sort of flexible attendance, and my professor has not been willing to accommodate that, or I've had to do extra work to make up for that, which has put me even further behind in my other classes. And it's just, like, this awful cycle of constantly catching up on work, and then just as you think you're close enough to finally be caught up, something else happens, and you're behind all over again. Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you 100%. I do really hate this professor culture sometimes. Professors can be hit or miss sometimes. Like, don't get me wrong, I've had the most, you know, accommodating professors ever who stay on the syllabus. You know, you get an automatic 24-hour grace period for every assignment. No need to ask, no need to email me, it's just free whenever you need it. But then I've had other professors who are the complete opposite, and this reminds me of an experience one time when I had a similar tech malfunction with my laptop. It wasn't really typing, the keys weren't really typing correctly, and I'm sure that, you know, as a poli-sci major, labor studies major, humanities major, all we really do is write, write, write, and typing was kind of everything I needed at that moment. And yeah, I admit I could have started it earlier, but it was just something I didn't expect at all, and you know, that's sometimes something we have to be prepared for, and I just wasn't prepared at that moment. And so when I emailed my professor, you know, asking for an extension, an assignment that wasn't due until midnight, but I know that I, you know, I needed more time to give it my all, he replied to me kind of in a passive-aggressive tone and told me, oh, you can, you know, check out a laptop at the library or, you know, visit the library using one of the desktops. It felt so disheartening to hear that because he was just kind of disregarding my emotions. I mean, I paid for that laptop myself, and to see it broken, like, that was another emotional layer that I had to go through, and it just felt like I was being totally overlooked. Yeah, and you bring up a really good point about how you said, yeah, I could have served the assignment earlier when you asked the extension, because when I have asked for extensions in the past, I've had professors be like, oh, but you've had, like, enough time to work on this, or, like, I gave you the assignment so long ago, but also all my other professors gave me all the assignments that long ago, too, and I've had to do all those other assignments as well, and it's not like, you know, you give me that assignment, like, three weeks ago, and then absolutely nothing else goes on in the class. We still have assignments in between, and it's just so frustrating to hear that, oh, we gave you enough time, so what you're asking for isn't necessary. It's, oh, but I've had to write this paper for this class and this for that class, and I've had a midterm to study more, and even though you gave me three weeks to work on this paper for this class, you've also given me a midterm in between, and you've also, like, given me, like, other assignments that I had to do before that, so it's kind of been, like, a survival mode when it comes to doing my assignments. I think of what to do in the next few days, and then I work kind of one day at a time, and that's really the only way to get through the amount of work that we have to do. So, yeah, really, when we step back and look at the big picture, there's a very, very clear pattern that students are overworked, financially strained, and lacking the institutional support that they need to succeed. Yeah, and, you know, that's why we're creating a website to share these findings in a way that's accessible and engaging. We're using a multimedia approach, including data visualizations, student testimonies, and even a podcast, like this one, to make sure these stories reach more people. And that leads to our next episode. We've shared the data, but next time we'll hear directly from student workers themselves. Thank you, and that wraps up today's episode. If you found this discussion meaningful, please share with friends, classmates, or colleagues who might also benefit from these insights. And don't forget to check out our website, where we'll be sharing more stories, research findings, and ways to get involved. And don't forget to tune in next time, where we'll be speaking with a student worker about their first-hand experiences balancing work and school. See you then! Thanks for listening!