Utah State the next generation
Work, school, studying and diapers. As could be expected, students with children don’t have a lot of free time.
“It’s a lot different than being a student without a kid,” Scott Jenkins, a graduate student in school counseling, said as he watched his 10-month-old son Talan play with beads on the floor.
Jenkins said it’s easy to get distracted from school when you have a child to take care of and sometimes he wonders how he gets everything finished.
“I ask myself that question every day,” he said. “It gets down to I have deadlines and everything I procrastinated has to get done.”
Scott Carlson, a senior in mechanical engineering, is the father of two boys – 20 months old and one week old. He said he gets everything done by setting priorities and having kids in the picture of student life make things interesting.
“I just try to stay above water and get things done, and at the same time, build a relationship with my kids,” Carlson said.
One thing that has helped him, he said, is his job in the computer labs on campus. He is able to do his homework there, so when he comes home, he said he doesn’t have to worry about it as much.
That’s not possible for every student who has children, though. Jenkins works full-time on campus in the Graduate Office and then comes home to not only his family, but homework as well. He said he gets distracted easily and his wife, Shirlene, said her husband lacks sleep.
“He works from 8-5 and then does homework in the evenings,” she said. “It’s hard because he doesn’t get to be a dad as much.”
Carlson said the hardest part for him is leaving when his children wake up and getting home when they’re going to bed.
That’s tough for Nathan Buckner, too, who said he gets home from work at Wal-Mart many nights after his 16-month-old daughter Megan has gone to bed so he doesn’t get to see her.
Buckner, a senior in biological engineering, said he’s learned how to juggle his schedule, so he usually plays with Megan in the mornings when his wife, Kellie, is at work. And he balances doing his homework with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“I do my homework in the morning when Kellie is at work,” he said. “I’ll make Megan a sandwich and cut it into four parts and give her one part at a time while she’s captive in the highchair. This takes at least a half hour and gives me time to do some homework.”
Some days aren’t always that simple, though, Buckner said, and he and his wife figure things out along the way. Every other semester, he said Kellie has also been a student and eventually, she will earn a degree in history and English secondary education. Working out schedules when both the Buckners are students is a little more difficult, but they say they’ve relyed on some good friends to help them.
He said the semester he did the worst in school was when Megan was a newborn because she would wake up every few hours.
“Newborns don’t care if you have finals in the morning or if there have been projects you’ve been doing,” Buckner said.
Besides being sleep deprived at times, he said having is child is also challenging when Megan has tantrums and he can’t figure out what she wants.
Although sometimes it’s rough being a student and having a daughter, Buckner said it’s all worth it.
“The hardest part is [Megan’s] little spurts of sheer crabbiness,” he said. “The very best part is coming home from school and I walk in the door and Megan runs over to me with open arms and a smile on her face. The love that she has is priceless.”
Carlson said his favorite part about being a father is watching his children learn new things every day. He said he can come home from school and his son will say a new word he couldn’t before.
“It’s an amazing process,” he said.
Students with children can balance school and family as long as they have their priorities straight, Carlson said. Family comes first, he added, but studying has to be a main concern too, so that the student can eventually graduate. This may mean spending longer days on campus sometimes.
His wife, Kathryn, said, “Sometimes it’s hard to juggle what you want and what [kids] want. Sometimes you have dinner by yourself and that’s OK, too.”
Scott Carlson said it helps to have a schedule and good friends help get things done. He said students with kids need to be understanding and have good communication with their husbands or wives.
“Be flexible and be able to change things and readjust,” he said.
Kathryn Carlson added, “You just gotta go with it!”
-mnewbold@cc.usu.edu