One month ago, if I was told that both my jobs were basically shutting down, I wouldn't have believed it. But here I am, with my hours cut short, not sure how I'm going to be paying my rent or my bills next month.
I am a full-time student and have two part-time jobs. I pay for my rent, groceries, car payment, gas and every other thing you can think of (besides my car insurance and my cellphone bill... thank you, Mom). Having two jobs while being a full-time student isn't easy.
I'm going to school to be a sideline reporter one day. I'm a double major in journalism and advertising with an interest in sports journalism and advertising. I have a part-time job with an NBA team working with fan experiences and then I have a part-time serving job with a restaurant that's owned by the same NBA team.
Recently, everything started shutting down. First, it was the NBA, which put me out of my first job. Then it was all sports, which basically took me out of my second job since it's a sports bar. You can't have a sports bar without sports. All my in-person classes are now online until at least April 10.
I'm really struggling.
And I know my coworkers would agree with me that they're struggling too. I don't have the luxury of having my parents pay for my things while in college because my family is not rich by any means. They have their own necessities they need to pay for themselves.
States are slowly starting to shut down restaurants and bars and I understand why. I'm not saying that shutting everything down isn't necessary (or is it?), but I know many of us who happen to work in sports or the service industry (or both like me), don't know what they're going to do.
I don't know how I'm going to feed myself, pay rent and pay my bills when I go to work and end up getting sent home an hour later because I didn't have a single table.
I would like to sincerely say thank you to those who are still coming out and tipping much more than anticipated to help us out.
Being 21 years old, I never really would have thought I'd be thinking that I could end up homeless or completely moneyless.
I truly never thought that'd I be in a predicament like this and sadly, you should always prepare for the worst. But when you're a college student who has two jobs in two different industries that happen to be affected by this, it sucks.
I just keep telling myself to keep holding on and eventually, it will get better.
