With the joy and good cheer of the holiday season, also comes stress and exhaustion for students working extra hours and studying for finals.

Many students feel a responsibility to work while attending school to pay for personal expenses and help their families. Working and attending school can be overwhelming at regular times of the year, but the holidays have a way of intensifying those concerns.

New Tech senior Bryanna Longoria works on average an extra 10 hours a week during the holiday season at her part time job Sonic, leaving her with little time to study for her finally exams.

“The class I’m most worried about is English because we’re writing a research paper and writing a paper in general is very time consuming,” Longoria said. “It takes a lot of focus and planning and that’s just time I don’t really have.”

New Tech senior Dayana Sanchez works an extra 7 hours a week while on the job at Auntie Anne’s is also conflicted with the responsibilities of work and finals as well.

“When I’m at work all I can think about it school and when I’m at school all I can think about is work,” Sanchez said. “I’m actually pretty concerned with my AP Statistics finals because with my work hours increasing I probably have around an hour every other day to study.”

School during finals can be exhausting on its own, and adding a job to the mix during the holiday is even more exhausting. But nothing will drain you more than the average holiday shopper.

“Because people are Christmas shopping at the mall gets really hectic and of course people want food and sometimes customers get really impatient and fussy,” Sanchez said.

With the burden of holiday shoppers, final exams, and excessive work hours, some question

whether working during the holidays is really worth all that trouble.

New Tech senior Rosaura Hernandez said why working during the holidays isn’t the wisest thing to do.

“Students don’t need to work during the holidays. They should use the time to enjoy being with their family,” Hernandez said. “If for some personal reason you have have to work, I think you should really manage how many hours you work because if you’re working too much it’s like trapping yourself in a cage. You exert yourself to work to get money for yourself, but then you don’t really have the time to do other stuff and on top of that you also have less time for school.”

Other students have an entirely different opinion.

“I feel like students should challenge themselves and go to school while working,” Sanchez said. “It’s going to have its negatives and positives but working is going to teach you about time management and its preparing you for real life.”