This year I am attending my second year of a 21 month post secondary program
 (3D Modeling for Animation and Games).  Being a private art school, it isn't cheap.  Tuition alone (before books, supplies, living expenses and rent) is $40,000.00CDN.  My student loans are just enough to cover my tuition, and I have a couple scholarships and bursaries as well as some savings, But I still have to have a part-time job to live comfortably (emergency and rainy day savings).  And as if money wasn't enough to stress about... well... I think this is better to explain.

I have 5 classes a week.  Each of which is 4 hours long (20 hours a week total).  Each class gives 4-12 hours of homework per week on average.  I currently have a part-time job at a local Home Depot.  There I work approximently 18-24 hours per week. 

Recently, I have been having issues with my new department manager at work.  My older manager, who was switched over to another department, was absolutely wonderful.  She was very understanding of my circumstances and was very flexible with my hours (as a manager should be).  The new manager is pretty well her opposite.  He is very inconsiderate of my being a student and has straight up told me that your source of income is what should come first.  Perhaps this may be true when you are single with a career, but not when you are only at a job to help get by in school, and school is my number one priority.
Now, with how my school works, my schedule changes once every 3 months.  Up until this manager moved into my department it was never an issue.  I could trade off shifts and what not with coworkers.  But this manager now has put in rules that don't follow store policy stating that: 1. We are not allowed to change our availability anymore.  (This is possibly the most unreasonable rule he has made up) 2. All requested days off must be run by him and no other in-store manager (Store Policy states that any store/department manager can sign off a request) 3.  If we call in because we are ill or something comes up, we HAVE to present a doctors note.  This is not a store policy.  Just something he thinks should be.  (He also told me that I am no longer allowed to call in when when a class is extended or switched to another day, that I am expected to come to work anyways) 4. Associates must be available any day they have written on their permanent availability, no matter how short the notice (Extremely unreasonable, as I need time to get all of my homework done...and sleep).

I think that he is power tripping on us, and have been so stressed out about work that it has been affecting the rest of my life, as if I have to leave this job, it will be difficult to find another and I only have so much money to get by without one.  Taking a step forward, rather then looking elsewhere for a job, I have requested to switch to another department in the store.  I can only hope that the request goes through.

So with the massive amounts of school work as well as stress from my job I have be extremely stressed out.  I realize I need to find an outlet for all of this, but I have no time to spare, unless I stop sleeping all together.

While I do realize that there are others who have it worse than me, it is still very difficult.  I just need help finding a happy medium.