Like many college students before me, and like many who will come after me, I am one of those students who have the pleasure of trying to balance school, extracurricular activities and work.
I got my very first job at the ripe, young age of 17 — cue “Dancing Queen” from Mama Mia — working as a sales associate for Plato’s Closet.
I worked through my junior and senior years of high school. When I became a freshman in college, I decided to hold off on working to focus on my school work, discover what I loved about Appalachian State University, and find out who I was as a person.
Flash forward to my sophomore year of college and all the money that I had saved up from working in high school was finally starting to dwindle. I got another job as a sales associate for the summer, and once school started I quit to focus on my grades again. During the summer before my senior year, I got a job as a sales associate at Boone Belles.
I have a very bubbly, outgoing personality, so it was a no-brainer for me to look for a job in sales. I loved people, I loved talking and I loved helping costumers find the perfect product that they needed. I always had to physically be at the boutique to do my job.
Now, a senior in college, I stepped out of my comfort zone and made the decision to get a job as an assistant and client relations consultant for a health insurance company. The kicker? I get to work from home.
This was the first time that I had ever worked a job where I didn’t need to physically be in my workspace. I was really excited about this opportunity, and I was really excited about the change of pace.
However, all the excitement did not come without question. How was I going to get paid? What would my hours look like? How different would this be from my other jobs? Can I consider myself an adult now?
Having worked this stay-at-home job for nearly a month now, here are my thoughts on working from home.
Working from home can have a lot of benefits. One of the things that I absolutely love is not having to drive to and from work. I can literally just roll out of bed to get my cup of coffee and immediately begin working. And at the end of the day, I can literally just close my laptop and be done instead of wondering how I’m going to get home and what time I’ll be walking through the door.
I get to start and end my day the exact way that I want too, and I get to set my own hours. Instead of having to wake up and budget in enough time for me to get to work I get to sleep those extra 10-15 minutes that would have been taken up otherwise.
I also love that I get to create my own little home workspace at my desk. This makes me feel more professional and makes me feel as if I’m actually taking some steps in the right direction towards adulthood.
Although working from home may seem like the ideal job for many, it’s something that really is meant for certain kind of people. To me, the kind of people who decide to work from home need to be self-motivated and need to be able to create specific goals and plans and know how to stick to them. Working from home means that no one is going to be following you around telling you what to do and when to do it. If you are considering working from home, you need to be able to wake up, know what has to be done that day and execute it on your own. If you say that you are going to wake up at 9:00 a.m. and work till 1:50 p.m., then you need to be able to do that and stick to it.
Working at home means that there are so many temptations around you that can prevent you from doing your work, like wanting to hang out with your roommates and friends, wanting to watch Netflix from the comfort of your bed, or just taking a nap after a long and tiring day. But you have to be able to resist those temptations and power through your work.
I can honestly say that I love working from home. It not only allows me the flexibility of going to classes and getting my school work done, it also allows me to be put in work hours. When I worked at the boutique they would give me shifts that I would have to tackle in one sitting. Now if I know that I want to log 5 hours of work, I can knock out a few hours before class and then a couple more after I’m done.
Working from home has, without a doubt, pushed me to be a better worker. If you are an organized, self-disciplined and self-motivated person, working from home could be a great option for you.