The goal of Paper A is to help the audience, BYU college students who think that student employment does not help academic success, to see that it can help. The claim is that having a part-time job (while being a full-time student) increases academic success. The reason is because having a part-time job increases time management skills. The implicit assumption is that whatever improves time management skills also improves academic success.
The argument is made using some weak pathos, but mainly ethos and logos. The paper begins by appealing to the readers pathos. I talk about my plight as a poor college student in need of funds. But that appeal ends at the end of the intro. Throughout the paper I attempt to appeal to ethos—I try to call upon my own credibility as a student employee to make my point. This is weak because I am not really an expert. What works for me may not work for every student employee. Also throughout the paper I attempt to appeal to logos. Logically, I try to make the argument, that improved time management will improve academic success. This appeal to logic could be clearer and more concise. All three appeals, to pathos, ethos and logos, could be more consistent, and the appeals to ethos and logos should definitely be backed up by more empirical research as opposed to simply personal experience.
The facts behind the paper could be typical, but the way it is presented is under-researched and therefore there is no way to tell if it is typical or not. The paper fails on this end. Also, the paper makes a last minute point that employment on-campus is more helpful to academic success than off-campus work. This idea is not relevant to the original enthymeme. Other than that most of the rest of the paper is relevant to the argument.
Overall, the argument made in Paper A is not effective.
PAPER A:
Student Employment: Good or Bad?
Let’s face it, college is expensive. As one whom, in High School, focused mainly on building up my academic resume in order to gain acceptance into the university of my choosing, my financial health and future obligations were negligently pushed to the wayside. So, once I reached my goal of getting into college, I realized that I either needed to get to work or take out some serious student loans. What was a girl to do? Work a part-time job while going to school and risk the chance of harming my precious transcript? Or maybe take out loans to make tuition and housing payments with the risk of starting my independent life already in debt? After weighing the costs and benefits of each I decided to get a job. But I still couldn’t help but wonder, what are the consequences of having a part-time job on the academic success of a full-time college student?
You could argue that having a part-time job on top of full-time student responsibilities would be overwhelming and cause unnecessary stress, and that stress would in turn interfere with academic success. It can be inferred that time and energy are finite resources and hence, a job would use up these resources and harm a student’s grades. This is indeed a valid argument. However, I would argue that the real cause of stress is not having too many responsibilities that take up these resources; what really causes stress is not being able to effectively fit all of those activities into your limited amount of time. So, if feeling overwhelmed is a result of feeling like you do not have enough time to fulfill your responsibilities, effectively managing your time can help to solve that. I submit that a part-time job, instead of increasing stress, would increase time-management skills allowing students to make better use of their finite resource of time.
The majority of research shows that students who work fewer than 20 hours a week more often than not report higher GPA’s than students who do not work at all. A job is only so overwhelming when the student is working more than 20 hours a week (Dundes & Marx). When one has a structured, rigid schedule filled with specific times for classes and for work, they must schedule specific times for studying and social life, making better use of their time, decreasing stress and improving academic success. The BYU Stress Management Center encourages cultivating time-management skills in order to relieve stress, and having a job helps students to cultivate those necessary time management skills.
During my time as a part-time student employee, I have found that my time-management skills have skyrocketed. When you have all of the responsibility and time commitment of a class schedule on top of a rigid work schedule mixed in with friends and family obligations, it is necessary to learn how to balance all of your responsibilities. Even though you have more on your plate, you are more aware that time is precious, and you use it more wisely. The acquirement of these time-management skills makes more effective, successful students, and by extension more effective human beings.
You could also argue that the time constraints of a job on top of the time commitment to school would not even leave adequate time for an active, healthy social life despite keen management of time. The reason we are away at university is because we want to learn and to get an education, and academic achievement and success should be our number one priority. However, it could also be argued that a social life is one of those things that keep you balanced which is also important to keeping optimal grades. Yes, having a part-time job does take at most 20 hours from your week, but you still have 148 hours to budget to school, sleep and social activity. Having a part-time job could decrease the amount of social activity, but it would increase academic success which is our ultimate goal.
It could also be argued that only on-campus jobs are beneficial to academic success. I think that this is a very valid argument. During my time as an undergraduate student I have worked both on and off campus, and I definitely excelled more academically while working on-campus than I did while working off. A.W. Astin (1975) concluded that on-campus jobs increase student integration which in turn increases academic success, while off-campus employment is more often associated with a lower GPA. On-campus jobs lead to more exposure to similar people, for example, students who also are seeking academic success. It also could expose you to professors and other professionals that could help to build your resume. Not to mention the geographic location of on-campus jobs, especially at BYU, are very localized decreasing travel time and increasing the amount of time you have left in your day. Dundes and Marx also concluded that amount of time spent on-campus has a positive correlation with GPA. Off-campus jobs take students away from campus and decrease said exposure. Also, off-campus employers are less likely to be sympathetic to the academic needs of students. In an off-campus job it is expected that the job comes first, but on-campus employers are required to put academic well-being before vocational.
I have found in my time here at Brigham Young University that having a part time on-campus job, in addition to funding my intellectual endeavors, has added to my resume, boosted my time management skills and complemented my academic career.
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