With the mounting college tuition rates and state of the economy today, more and more students are choosing to attend college and work at the same time. Not everyone can afford to be a full-time college student and still support themselves when the degrees have been handed out. Whether you’re working a part-time or full-time job, it can certainly be difficult to balance it all at the same time.

In order to rise above your schedule demands, here are some recommended tips for staying ahead of your work and college requirements:

1. Careful Planning: This is the most important tip of all. Planning is everything. Carefully survey all of your class options for the semester, and try and cluster them on 2-days out of the week. That way, you’ll have another 5-days to play around with working at your job. Employers tend to be less understanding when it comes to schedule demands.
2. Eliminate Wasted Time: Don’t schedule one class at 8AM and then next one at 2PM. That builds in 4-hours of wasted time when you could have just frontloaded all the classes over a 5-hour period. The more “free time” you get to play with when finalizing the schedule, the less stressed you’re going to feel.
3. No Distractions: You don’t have time to be distracted when doing your schoolwork. If your college common area has TVs and shouting people all the time, use your library instead. It’s not worth the hassle to be possibly interrupted when your time is as valuable as it is.

In the end, navigating both a job and college work is going to make you more disciplined and prepared for what the real world throws your way.