By Bailey Rankin
Student Reporter
Marisa Wilkinson sits in a rocking chair that gently moves back and forth.
The room is dimly lit so that the child she holds in her arms will not be stirred, but the shadows of cribs and highchairs are still visible.
Wilkinson is at work, a daycare where she has been employed for the last five months, taking care of children that are not hers.
Wilkinson, a sophomore early childhood education major, is worried. She has worked almost every other night since she began at this daycare back in October of 2018 and she says she is burned out.
It’s not the woman she works for or the children she watches that are the problem; it is the late nights she commits to them. Her shift is 3-11 p.m., but some nights she doesn’t make it home until 12:30 a.m..
Then she starts her routine over at 8 a.m. the next morning. First school, then work and finally some sleep.
These shifts take up most of her weekdays and a few weekends. She says that she is tired, that she feels like a middle-aged woman instead of a 21-year-old college student.
Working 30 to 40 hours a week as well as being a full-time student will do that to a person. So, she says she has to make a decision: get a new job or continue feeling this way.
She asks herself out loud, “is spending evenings with another person’s child worth not spending time with friends and family of my own? Just to make good money? That’s something I’m trying to decide.”
Her thoughts go back and forth, weighing the pros and cons, just like the rocking chair she sits in.