Many students wonder if they should start working while they are in school. They think, “It would be awesome to start saving, but my friends would rather chat on Insta and watch YouTube. Would working help me? Or is it just a waste of time?”

Working does benefit students. In fact, it might be the factor that best prepares them for the future and leads them to success.

1. Working teaches students skills they don’t learn at school

Universities don’t teach students how to wash dishes, clean tables, or serve others. However, these skills are needed once students own their own houses, have their own families, and need to take care of themselves as well as the people around them.

Working part-time not only teaches students how to live a life, but it also provides more opportunities for experiences. When you shatter a plate, you learn from failure to be careful next time. When you’re late to work and scolded by your boss, you learn time management. When you witness an injury or emergency you’ve never seen at school, you learn how to deal with it in the future. The more we go through the more we learn.

2. Students learn the value of money

We all have had times when we were naive and wanted our parents to give us whatever we wanted. Though most of the time, we were too young to notice how stressful it is for them to earn enough money to support a family.

Earning money is not easy, especially for students. Employees at restaurants in Taiwan often work more than eight hours a day, but the money they get usually doesn’t offer much quality of life.

When students start taking part-time jobs, they learn the value of money and how tiring and harsh it is to work and endure professional pressure. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Students who work will find out that they run out of money much faster than they thought they would, since they are used to the abundance their parents worked their socks off for.

3. Students get an idea of what financial independence looks like

Becoming financially independent means that a person has enough income to pay for their living expenses without depending on others.

Everyone has to become financially independent at some point, so why not start to work on it earlier and have some more experiences? Once students start earning money on their own, they will need to practice spending, budgeting, and saving. This is when parents can just rest and watch their child gradually lessen their reliance on the family.

Trust me, many kids feel guilty about spending too much of their parents’ money. This is why working earlier not just helps the student slowly come to afford their own daily expenses, it also helps ease the guilt a lot.

4. Students get to know about the world of work

As I mentioned earlier, most teenagers in Taiwan are well protected by their parents and their schools, so they usually have a shamefully narrow idea of the problems, peoples, obstacles, and words they will face in the future.

Part-time jobs have an environment where students might be reprimanded by their employers, where they need to prepare themselves for crazy, unreasonable customers, and where they risk being fired if they do something wrong. Though it can be pretty devastating, these opportunities help students to broaden their views and experience what is outside their comfort zones.

Students will start learning how to properly interact with their employers, other employees, customers, and other people during working hours in a professional setting. Furthermore, they will also learn how to manage their feelings and expressions during work to give better impressions.

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In conclusion, working earlier is beneficial for students. After having part-time experience, students will know how to act professionally, learn the value of money, the process of becoming independent, and all the skills they haven’t been taught at school.

This is why if you are a teenager wondering if you should begin working as a student, just do it, go get a job, and later you will thank yourself for doing so.