Students today are more strapped for cash than ever.

Whether it be lacking extra spending money or coming up short on tuition, more and more students are looking for employment. While an off-campus job can be very stressful there are also great benefits to expanding your horizons.

Motivation for getting a part time-job could not be more varied. Some students need money to pay for health insurance; some need to pay for tuition, rent and food. Others are motivated by more material needs — shopping for clothes, paying for nights Downtown or having a little extra cash on hand to go out to dinner or a movie. No matter which category you fall into, getting a job is definitely a path you might want to look into.

The obvious question when thinking about getting a part-time job is: will I have enough time? Balancing schoolwork with a job can be very difficult and it is important to know yourself and your limits when thinking about taking on another commitment.

Bill McCarthy, the associate director of the Career Development Center on campus said that the knowledge gained from an off-campus job or internship can have many real-life applications and benefits.

“When students get experience in the real world, the working world, it’s called experiential learning,” McCarthy said. “It’s applying knowledge from the classroom in a work setting and it’s also learning new skills. They also now have a reference and experience that they can use in the future. Depending on the job they have, it may also be a place where they can advance.”

Working off campus while taking a full course load and doing other extra curricular activities can be a little overwhelming.

“Whenever anyone is doing class and another activity they should learn time management,” McCarthy said.

While time management may be an acquired skill for some, McCarthy said that it can be very beneficial for students to learn. Time management skills are something that employers will be looking for when students head out into the job market after graduation, he explained.

“It’s also a positive because they are learning a new skill that they can use, which is good in the future for getting a full-time job after graduation,” he said.

In addition to taking up studying time, working a part-time job is also very tiring. Gabrielle Roberts, a junior linguistics major, is currently dealing with the difficult balancing act of work and school.

“Finding time to manage all the work I have this semester with working has been hard because I get home from work and all I want to do is sleep,” Roberts said.

This is a challenge that is hard to overcome when you are trying to balance being a full-time student with a part-time job. Keeping up the stamina to attend classes during the day and working 15 to 25 hours outside of that is very hard, which means that you need to be aware of your limits and be sure not to overtax yourself with a heavy course load and a lot of hours at work.

Something to keep in mind when getting a part-time job is transportation.

Roberts spends more time on the Binghamton city buses than she would like and is not always impressed with their punctuality.

“Not having a car is really hard,” Roberts said. “I spend hours on the bus and end up getting to work an hour early because of the bus schedule. And sometimes it’s hard to depend on the schedule — one time the bus was a half hour late and I had no other way to get to work.”

Even if you have a car, however, the parking situation on campus isn’t ideal for students that have to go from work to class. Work availability becomes even more complicated when the parking lots are close to full every day — it is hard to work in how much extra time you are going to need to find a spot.

Michelle Usewicz, a graduate student in the teaching program, consistently has problems finding parking spaces when she gets back on campus.

“Having to drive between the job and class and making sure I can find a parking space makes it really hard to get to class on time.”

Other things to keep in mind are: the number of hours per week you have available for work, and that it is a job that you want to be doing — nothing is worse than slogging through hours of boredom after you have already been in class all day.

Not everything about an off-campus job is hard though. Students agree that working in the community opens them up to new opportunities.

Meredith Sosulski, a senior biochemistry and anthropology double major, likes that her job opened her up to people she would not have met otherwise.

“It’s definitely a different type of people to work with. You meet people who aren’t just students,” Sosulski said.

Roberts has had the same experience at her job.

“Meeting people that don’t go to Binghamton University is awesome. It’s cool to have friends that are outside of the University, and you already have something in common with them, so it’s not hard.”

If you are looking for a job off-campus, the Career Development Center is a good resource to use. Work-study and off-campus jobs are listed on its e-recruiting Web site and it offers numerous resume-building opportunities.