There it goes again, that sound that haunts me every morning. I had just fallen asleep three hours ago, but the sound doesn’t care; it shrieks relentlessly.

Like clockwork, it goes off every day at the same time as a signal to start the chaotic juggling act I do every day.

What am I juggling? It’s a series of responsibilities of school, work and a social life. It’s a juggling act that we all participate in college. Last semester, I learned the hard way how chaotic life could get when I decided to work three jobs and go to school full time.

Like every horror film, everything starts off sweet and simple. You go to school and have a job to help pay your way through school, but soon you realize that one job isn’t enough, so you find another, and then, in my case, another.

I started the semester working on a food truck, but I also had a job as a disc jockey on the side. It was simple, but then work slowed down at the food truck, so I took up a position at my old job at a winery and soon started a routine that gives me chills whenever I remember it.

A typical day was a constant shift between work and school. Every day had its routine. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I would get up at 6 a.m. to go to the winery and finish at 3 p.m.; go to school at 4 p.m. and stay in class till 10 p.m. and do homework until late at night.

Tuesday would be a full shift at the winery and then off to my night classes. On Thursdays and Fridays, I would pull a full shift at the winery from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., then go to the truck from 5 p.m. to midnight.

The weekends were always a little more chaotic. As a DJ, work is very unpredictable it could come in very steadily like a light rain or extremely slow like a drought. During the spring semester, work came crashing down like a huge flood.

Saturdays and Sundays became a running match of meeting the food truck at its location and racing to whatever venues I was covering that night.

The constant moving had taken its toll on me after four months of the same routine. I was so tired that I walked out of a Bar Mitzvah, where I was a dj to have a screaming match with myself in my car in the parking lot. Yeah the stress was getting a bit too much. This much moving had even taken its toll on my grades. I was focusing my attention on so many different things that i neglected my anthropology class and ended up with a D in the course. I tried to get use to the life of having three jobs and going to school but it was beginning to wave heavy on me. After much consideration

I decided that I should cut down to only two jobs so, I decided to put in my two weeks notice at the food truck.

Today I currently still work at the winery and as a deejay along with being a student. There is still a little stress but not to the extent it used to be.

I learned a valuable lesson not to bite off more than I can chew. I learned that you have to be able to learn to moderate your time and try to figure out that balance, and if you can’t, then you have to make a change somewhere.

If you’re going to school and working at the same time, do not overload yourself too much or you’ll pay for it somehow. If you’re thinking of getting more than one job, take a second to ponder if you really can handle both work loads and go to school. Really think about it before adding a third job to your already busy schedule.