Hey, so I also work full-time and go to school. I'm actually a graduate student at a university about an hour and half to two hours away (depending on traffic and road construction) from where I live and work. Work full-time and school is not an easy thing to do, especially if you have a job that's either physically or mentally taxing.
The first 4 years of doing this graduate program I worked nights across the weekend (say thurs, fri, sat, sun 10 hr shifts) and would get off work Monday morning, get some food and drive up for class all day Monday. Crash hard all day Tuesday. Class on Wed. Then shift back to a night schedule for Thurs. It started off pretty well, but by the end of the third year I was pretty burned out and really struggling. I wasn't enjoying my job as much, and was just dreading driving up there. I was hoping to finish in 3-4 years, but I decided to slow it down a bit do give myself a more relaxed schedule. I could have gotten done faster if I took classes through the summer, but I decided not to and I'm glad. I really think my grades or sanity would have suffered if I tried to go straight through year round.
That Nov. starting my 4th year I decided I needed to get off the night shift even if it made taking classes harder. An opportunity for promotion came up and I applied for the position and got it, started in spring. It's a lot more responsibility and instead of working 40 hrs a week it's more like 50 some weeks. I'm pretty worthless when I get home, but I enjoy what I'm doing now so it helped immensely with the burnout.
This spring semester I had that work schedule plus 3 graduate classes and I tried to have a schedule where I'd work on class stuff on Mondays, Tues, Friday, and Saturdays. (Wed was commute day and after that I would just crash after work Thurs). But I found I just struggled to be productive on days I worked, then I'd feel guilty that I wasn't being productive and so on. So I decided to try and give myself permission to just study on the weekends and let myself read novels, or watch TV shows on weeknights. I wasn't sure how that was going to go, especially since using my weekends for schoolwork instead of a break sounded crappy. But it actually turned out well. I was able to train myself not to feel guilty for not being productive on weeknights (there were weeks where I still had to do stuff during the week) and I actually found that since I was more productive and not exhausted on the weekends, I was more efficient and got stuff done faster than I seemed to when I tried to do it after work. So even though I was doing most of my coursework during the weekend, I still had time to hang out with friends and relax on the weekends as well.
Take home points:
1.) Give yourself breaks, like summers off if you need to. This is a marathon, not a sprint. ( should note that I'm 32 so I do feel the pressure to get on to the next stage)
2.) Shift gears if you need to. Switching positions at my job made a heck of a difference even though it involved me working more hours. I really like what I do so it's less stressful overall.
3.)Try rearranging your schedule. If you're too exhausted to be productive after work, try studying in the morning or if the course allows it, just do it on the weekends. If you do that and still get done what you need to, then the guilt will fade away eventually.
4.) regular exercise seems to help me a lot when it comes to burn out so I recommend finding time, even 20 minutes to just do some cardio and burn off some steam a few times a week. it seems like you wont' have time, but again it helps with attention span and efficiency and you wind up better off.
