Last week, before I packed up with my family and headed up to Traverse City for five days with my family, I met up with a fellow PRSSA National Committee member, Jenna Huskinson. It was great to catch up with her and we started chatting about our other plans for the year. One thing we discussed was how little time we have to do all the things we want. Both of us have had internships, jobs, volunteer projects and extra-curricular activities that have kept our college schedules full.

We also lamented about the college paradox: maintaining balance between finding relevant experience in your field and making enough money to pay rent for the month. It’s not always easy to find both in the same place. I see a lot of internship posting that are unfortunately unpaid and that pretty much disqualifies me from applying. Am I that stuck up that I feel like I deserve money? No. Do I have a lot of bills to pay? Yes. So, like many other students, I’ve had to make it work and do both at the same time.

In my own college experience, I’ll be the first one to admit I’ve said “yes” a lot more times than I’ve said “no.” I’ve signed on to projects that I know will be time consuming yet I find that I want to help out and offer whatever I can to make the project a success. With a lot of college students I know are in these same shoes, it’s worth asking for advice:

How do you balance your passions with such realities as rent, utilities and tuition? Is there a way to combine both? How do you know when you are not passionate about your job anymore?

I’m asking because I’m looking for advice. I’m just about to start my last (well, kind of last year — I have three semesters left) year of college and I want to make sure I’m doing things that I want to do and things that will help pay the bills. But more importantly, I know these decisions won’t stop once I graduate.

So, what’s your take? How do you balance what you believe in with what pays the bills?

By the way, I learned on my vacation that I’d really like to work the wine vineyards here: