How to Balance School and Your Tech Career

From the perspective of a First Class graduate who juggled school and work, and succeeded at both.

9 min readJan 8, 2024

Being a student is hard! Building a career while in school is even harder but certainly not impossible. However, you must know that your dream is valid and I’ll show you how I achieved it. Before we go into this article, here’s a brief introduction and some of my accomplishments as a student and tech professional.

My name is Joy Victor and I’m a Data Analyst at DataedX. I also have a Virtual Assistant Business where I work with tech experts seeking to make a change in society. Last year I graduated with a First Class degree (4.64/5.00) in Computer Science, top of my department. During my degree program, I won two scholarships, got two internships, finished two Udacity Nanodegrees, won a MacBook from Enyata, became a WTM Cloud Ambassador, volunteered for a ton of stuff, worked part-time jobs, and started a VA business.

Content

This article goes beyond popular tips like, read your books, stay in school, don’t do drugs, etc. I share my top secrets on time management, productivity, support systems, passing tests/exams, study techniques, seizing opportunities, and excelling in your career. I do this in three parts.

Wellness: This section contains tips on how to manage these demanding environments (school and work) while being productive. It covers managing stress, anxiety, burnout, and making time for friends and family.
Academia: Here, I share tips on how to excel in academic performance assessments like tests, exams, etc. These tips are also applicable when learning a tech skill.
Career: This section covers career roadmaps, mentorship/career guidance, how to get work experience, and how to apply for opportunities (scholarships/jobs).

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out in your career or you have a job already, you stand to gain a lot from reading this article. Let’s get right in.

Wellness

1. Define your goal and its feasibility: Decide what you want to achieve and how feasible it is considering your unique circumstances. This sets the tone for your journey and allows you to align your priorities. For example, my initial goal was to graduate with a perfect CGPA of 5.0. I soon realized that this was impossible because it clashed with my desire to land a tech role before graduation. So I shifted gears to my new goals: a strong 4.5+ GPA and a tech role before graduation.

2. Productivity, Time Management, and Schedules: Juggling two dynamic settings means you don’t have time to waste! Productivity techniques are systematic ways designed to maximize time, available resources, and tasks. They make the difference between a chaotic, overwhelming day and one filled with great accomplishments. Here are a few I like:

The Pomodoro technique: This technique helps you break your day into 25-minute focus periods followed by five-minute breaks. This can look something like this, spending 25 uninterrupted minutes writing the scope of your thesis, followed by a 5-minute Instagram break.
Kanban: Kanban is a visualization technique that shows how a project or task will go from the starting point to the end, including milestones and possible challenges.
Biological prime time (BPT): This refers to when you have the most energy or feel you are most productive in accomplishing your tasks. I like to think there are three kinds of people in this world based on their energy levels; Morning people aka psychopaths (in my opinion haha!), Night owls, and Permanently exhausted pigeons (my favorite).
Time blocking: This is a time management method where you divide your day into blocks of time with each block accomplishing a specific task. Here’s a funny dialogue from the popular Christmas Movie, The Grinch where he time blocks his day.

You can combine one or more of these techniques to meet your needs and lifestyle, i.e. your school hours, work or study hours, and personal activities. By incorporating these productivity techniques in my life, I time blocked 7 am-5 pm for school activities and 9 pm-12 am for my tech career since my BPT is usually at night. On days when I’m demotivated, I use the Pomodoro technique to kickstart my tasks.

3. Have a support system: A support system is a group of people who give you help, encouragement, and relief. They can be your friends, family, mentors, colleagues, etc. The journey of juggling school and a career is gruesome. So on days when the struggles pierce through your soul like a jagger, you can count on them to be there for you. Discuss challenges and seek counsel from them, you’d be surprised at the amount of help, encouragement, and valuable insights you’d get.

4. Outsource Tasks: It’s impossible to do everything. By everything I mean, cooking, cleaning, washing, completing assignments, writing tests/exams, completing tasks at work, having a very social life, etc. Doing all these at peak performance every day without procrastinating, canceling, or leaving until the last minute is impossible. If you can, then I stand to be corrected. (Also, please send me a DM, I want a bit of your superhuman powers. Thank you!)

Outsourcing tasks doesn’t have to be anything fancy, you can always reach out to your siblings or friends for help. For example, I traded the protein (meat, eggs, fish, etc) in my meals with my brother whenever I wanted him to wash my clothes. It was a no-brainer for me. It saved me hours of washing, and I could focus my energy on other things.

5. Take breaks: Balancing work and school is mentally and physically taxing, so prioritizing self-care is non-negotiable. Maintain a healthy lifestyle by getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising regularly, and engaging in activities that bring you joy. Another smart move is to have a slow day. This is a day or a few hours in a day dedicated to doing all your favorite things. It will help you stay sane and avoid burnout.

Academia

1. Study Smarter, Not Harder: Academic evaluations (quizzes, assignments, tests, exams, etc.) go beyond reading books, there is an art to it. Here are some study tips to help you learn fast and retain information.

Mnemonic: A mnemonic uses the first letter of each word in a list or sequence of events to create a sentence that helps you remember. A popular mnemonic is My Very Excellent Mom Just Served Us Noodles. It is used to recall the order of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. My(Mercury) Very(Venus) Excellent(Earth) Mom(Mars) Just(Jupiter) Served(Saturn) Us(Uranus) Noodles(Neptune).
Method of Loci: The loci method is a technique for memorizing new information. It involves picturing yourself spreading pieces of information across a room and then coming back to retrieve it. For instance, if you are trying to memorize a recipe for banana bread, you might imagine placing bananas on the couch, sugar next to the lamp, milk on the bench, and so on. Then, in your mind, you’ll go back around the room and pick up the bananas, sugar, and milk in the order you placed them.
Spaced Repetition: This is a method of studying a material and actively recalling it at intervals. When you know a concept very well, you try not to study (see) it frequently. However, for the concept you are struggling with, try to see it more and more frequently. This forces your brain to pull out the concept at the closest time possible to when you are about to forget it. So your brain has to work as hard as it possibly can to recall this information and it encodes it better, which is more efficient and you can learn a lot faster.

Top Secret: When in class, try to spot the unique speech patterns of your lecturers. Everybody has one, you simply have to pay attention. In essay tests/exams try to ‘copy’ the lecturer’s speech pattern in your writing. That way, when they read your answers it seems like something they would have come up with.😉

2. Seek Help: You don’t have to navigate the labyrinth of academia disheveled and alone. Seniors and Youtubers will give you the cheat codes. For seniors, you can reach out to them to guide you on the rules and regulations of the “system”, the right courses to choose, how to deal with staff, and much more. If they are feeling generous, they can provide you with past exam/test papers. Youtubers on the other hand always come in handy when concepts fly over your head and your lecturers only communicate in hieroglyphics, lol.

3. Keep Track: When you have so much to do, it’s easy for some things to fall through the cracks. To avoid this, put everything (deadlines, assignments, group projects, etc) on your calendar as they come along. You can also utilize digital tools like task management apps, and to-do lists to stay on top of your commitments.

4. Strikes and Roadblocks: For students in developing countries, strikes have plagued your education system bringing it to its knees. This is a situation beyond your control. As much as you’d like to sulk over it, you can’t change it. Instead, use it to your advantage. See it as a chance to take courses, internships, and volunteer opportunities.

Career

1. Follow a Roadmap: A roadmap is a strategic plan that identifies a goal and outlines the necessary steps to achieve it. To avoid taking ignorant leaps in the dark, it is important to follow a roadmap. Roadmap.sh has roadmaps, guides, and other educational content tailored to any tech career path you like.

2. Mentorship and Career Guidance: A mentor is a person who offers advice, support, and assistance regarding a career. A mentor will guide you through the difficulties of the tech industry, help you advance professionally, and provide experience that you may draw from. They can also open doors and opportunities for you and help you network with other experts.

3. Join a Community: A community is a group of tech professionals with a common interest in technology-related topics like software engineering, data science, design, etc. Joining a community gives you access to like-minded people with similar goals. This goes a long way in boosting your learning morale. A community affords you the privilege of learning from other people’s experiences or getting feedback on your work. Opportunities to teach others might come while in the community, or even a job offer, you never know.

4. Internships and Volunteering: To get a job, you need work experience, to get work experience, you need a job. As you can see it’s a vicious cycle and very few organizations give fresh graduates a chance. The easiest way to get out of this is by volunteering or interning while you are in school. That way, you have a great CV when you graduate and with remarkable skills gained from the experience(s).

5. The right approach to applications: “That’s how I approach applications: Apply like you have nothing to lose — put in all you can like it’s the only shot you have at anything. Move on like you have nothing to gain — as you hit submit, imagine you’ve already been rejected. Start thinking of more opportunities.” — Imade Iyanu

In your lifetime you will have to apply to a lot of things, especially if you are ambitious. Adopting this approach not only increases your chances of success but it helps deal with the grief of rejection.

6. Managing work expectations: Aside from the tips shared above, a crucial one is communication. Open communication is crucial in both the workplace and the classroom. Inform your employer about your dual commitments. Some companies understand the value of education and are willing to accommodate flexible schedules or provide additional support by offering flexible work hours or remote work options. This is a highly debatable opinion, but if you decide not to communicate your dual commitments to the parties involved, then try to put the tips I shared earlier to good use. It will save you from failure on both sides.

Last Words

In the words of Steve Jobs, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” On some days you’ll cry, fall ill, slack off, etc but it’s life. Some days are better than others and you need to be kind to yourself. Looking back at my academic and professional achievements, I am grateful I didn’t drop out even though I attempted to, twice. My encouragement to you dear reader is — There is light at the end of the tunnel reader, just hang in there!

WAGMI (We’re all gonna make it)

Stay data savvy,
Joy (Jhoie) Victor 💕