Today we bring you another guest post from another fabulous millenial. Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching martial arts scholarships as well as massage therapy scholarships. Whenever she gets some free time, she enjoys watching a funny movie or curling up with a good book.
Financing Advice for Graduate Students: Finding the Right Balance for Those with an Assistantship
Grad school, to say the least is an exponential increase in difficulty over undergraduate programs. Having been a graduate of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, and a former graduate student, I can honestly say that graduate school has up to this point been my largest challenge. Between homework, projects, and working on your thesis it seems that there is little time left over to do much of anything else, much less work a part time job.
If you’re one of those individuals lucky enough to land yourself an assistantship, some of your finances will be taken care of. Really it depends on the program, at my school assistantships paid a little over $1000 a month, which for me wasn’t enough to cover the cost of my basic living expenses. To make matters worse, the 20 hours a week I was required by the college to work for the assistantship wasn’t recognized by my immediate supervisor. He literally expected more like 80 hours of work, talk about a bad deal.
I’m not saying that all assistantships are going to be so bad, but there were additional measures I could have taken to provide myself with a bit more autonomy. In this article I’m going to share some ideas with you about what I could have done differently to make sure my financial needs were being met during my time in grad school.
- Make sure to thoroughly research all available scholarship and fellowship opportunities. I had thought that I would be able to compensate for the slight decrease (I had been making about $300 more per month during my undergrad) in my monthly income by skimping a bit more on my food expenses. I failed to see the tradeoff between eating at the school cafeteria and the time it takes to go grocery shopping and prepare your own food. Living out in the countryside didn’t help, since its 40 minutes round trip just to go to the grocery store. On top of that the food at school was already dirt cheap, which meant I just spent more time shopping and preparing the food while not really saving any money in the long run.
- Make sure to check the conditions of your assistantship. I had a part time job that paid a decent hourly wage, and had planned to work there 10 hours a week during the assistantship. The assistantship required approval from the dean to work on the side, and two issues arose with this. First, when it came time to petition the dean to work outside the school, I found out that she didn’t give any approvals to do this. I then found out that the school prohibited people from simultaneously working at two campuses. The research I was involved in spanned both electrical engineering and medical imaging technology. I had thought that the collaborative aspect of working at two campuses would be welcomed; however this was not the case.
- Look for passive income streams to help balance out your finances with your scholarly duties. Although I had thought I would be able to balance part time work with the assistantship, I quickly realized that even if the dean had allowed me to keep working at the other research facility that I wouldn’t have had the time to do it anyways. If you can work up a passive income stream during your undergrad to complement your assistantship you will be sitting a lot better than I was. Generating some advertising revenues from blogging is what I would recommend. It does take some time to start making money off of a blog though, and that time will be a precious commodity during your graduate studies. By getting a head start on it during your undergrad you can set yourself up to do quite nicely during your assistantship. And believe me, the last thing you want is the added stress of having to deal with finances when you’re writing your thesis.
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This is super-interesting to me because I’m about to begin a doctoral program in the fall and a major concern of mine was having some source of income. My first year of tuition is covered and I’m living at home presently, but I will need some money coming in over the next 5 years. I anticipate qualifying for work-study or at least a part-time job, but it’d be nicest if I had a passive stream of income. Gotta get crackin’ on that.