Self-Employment and University: A Careful Balancing Act

Introduction

During November 2018, I was looking for the next way to expand my education and develop as an entrepreneur. I was previously studying law and due to several circumstances within my career and my personal life, I had begun to fall out of love with that prospective career path. Something needed to change.

In that time, I had recently started my newest venture; I had decided to become self-employed and I started to begin advertising my copywriting services on a number of different freelancer platforms, such as Upwork and Freelancer.com. My bosses at my previous company were incredibly supportive and even guided me through the early stages of this new venture.

I was at home, relaxing with my family and I saw an advert for Arden University on Facebook. Sure enough, they had a campus in Birmingham, which was close enough to my own home-city for me to commute to any classes. I didn't waste any time putting my application in for a BA (Hons) program in Business and within a few weeks, I had been accepted.

By February 2019, I was sitting in my first lecture, however, I soon found out that being self-employed, studying at university and juggling other personal needs was not going to be easy.

That's why in this article I am taking the time to share the things that I have learned through my first seven months adjusting to these new circumstances in my life.

1. Time Management Is Key

One of the most important aspects of being self-employed and attending university is to develop effective time management skills. Between your assignments and your work for your clients, you are going to have a lot of deadlines to be aware of and quite often clients may not be very open to being flexible with your schedule. Without effective time management, you may find yourself completing assignments and work for clients at the last minute, which will lead to your quality suffering.

Each weekend, what I tend to do is write a list of tasks that I will need to complete within the coming week. I will also make notes on how long I expect each task to take and the hours in which I will be carrying out the work. This allows me to divide my workload across the week, meaning I can take more time on each task, leading to a higher-quality outcome. Also, by being more organised you will find yourself feeling less stressed when you have a large amount of work to complete.

Of course, sometimes things will appear at very short notice and you will need to adjust your schedule to cope, however it will be a lot easier if you have effectively managed your time beforehand.

2. Take Time To Enjoy Yourself

One of the biggest problems that I have noticed amongst fellow students and entrepreneurs is the fact that a large number of them feel like they should be working constantly, only taking time out of their work so that they can eat a minimal amount of food and get a minimal amount of sleep.

I also fell victim to this way of thinking at one stage and it made me completely miserable, I took no enjoyment out of anything and my physical health began to rapidly deteriorate due to this.

To keep yourself sharp and to make sure that you don't face serious negative effects from overworking yourself, you need to find time in your schedule for non-work related activities which you enjoy. This could be something as simple as reading a book, watching your favourite TV series or anything else, but you need to enjoy it.

When I have a spare few hours and the weather is permitting, I like to go outside and play basketball with a few of my friends. It's a physical activity that I love and it gets my blood pumping, which helps to keep both my body and my mind healthy.

You're not a robot and you should take time away from your busy work life to just be a person.

3. Be Open If You Are Struggling

This is in some ways a skill, and it is something that I previously struggled with in the past, however, I have gotten a lot better at it in recent times and both my own work and my education have greatly benefited as a result.

Nobody can be a complete pillar of strength and at times, things are going to get difficult. This is true whether you've lost a client, you're struggling with an assignment, or you are just generally struggling with some personal aspects of your life. Being open about things is much more effective than bottling things up.

If you're struggling mentally, you should talk to someone you trust and look up to, such as your family, close friends, and lecturers.

For example, if you have a client that you expect to be handing you some more work very soon, but you're struggling with an assignment and need more time to work on it, you should be open about this. You don't necessarily have to talk about the exact thing that is bothering you and the message that you send can be something like this.

"Hi, John.

I hope you're well. I am just writing to let you know that I am going to be unavailable for work through the following dates, as I have a lot of personal matters to attend to. I apologise for any inconvenience caused and I will be available again from (Insert Date Here)."

You are explaining in advance that you have other things to take care of and your client should understand this, and if they don't, you shouldn't be afraid to cut ties with them.

4. Believe In Yourself

It can be incredibly difficult to balance the pressures of being self-employed and attending a full-time degree. Despite this, you wouldn't have signed up for your degree if you didn't believe you could do it and you should never let this self-belief be destroyed.

Your university wouldn't have accepted you onto their program if they didn't believe that you were capable of completing it.

The experience of university is a naturally stressful one and feelings of self-doubt are not abnormal, however, you need to understand that if you are experiencing issues with self-doubt, perhaps due to a grade you received or the fact that you do not understand an assignment, you need to be proactive. Seek additional support so that you can do better in your studies and understand that you are intelligent enough to do well on your program of study, you may just need a little extra help every now and then.

5. Learn How To Say No

This is quite possibly one of the most important things that an entrepreneur can develop, not only as a self-employed person at university but as a person in general.

Quite often, you will have a number of clients that are all trying to get you to do some new work for them at the same time, whilst you have an impending assignment due for submission. This situation can be incredibly stressful as you do not want to disappoint your clients, however, you also want to give yourself an opportunity to pass your assignment with the best grade possible.

This means that you may have to make a tough decision and tell one of your clients "No". This is not easy as you may be worried about one of your clients firing you if you refuse to carry out the work for them, especially if your business is in its infancy and has not grown very much yet. Despite this, clients come and go very frequently and the pool of available clients in the world is incredibly vast, whilst your education is not something that can be recouped as easily if dropped.

For example, I had to make a very difficult decision in my first week of joining university. I had a relatively long-standing client of mine asking me whether or not I could complete a piece of work for them within 24-hours. Normally this would not have been a problem, however, I was moving into a new home on that day and I had to begin work on an assignment, as well as having to complete a task for a client that had contacted me the day before this.

I told the client who had made the request that I could not help them with the piece of work and they dropped me on the spot, despite the fact that I had explained why I could not complete the work for them.

I wasn't too upset by this, as I knew straight away that I had made the right decision. I got an A on that assignment, my move went smoothly and my other client was incredibly happy with the work I had done. This outcome likely would not have happened if I had taken on even more work.

Conclusion

I'm not some sort of guru, nor do I claim to have all of the answers to help you guys get through university whilst working for yourselves, however, I do hope that some of these tips resonate with you, so that you can continue your studies and your entrepreneurial journey with better soundness of mind and more self-confidence.

Thanks for reading.