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Sleeping off the job
Students who work the night shift struggle to find time for relationships
By Matt Hirschfeld
mhirschfeld@kansan.com
Mona Panztanga is proud. Her 12-year-old son is finally playing real basketball. Not a pick-up game or backyard fun, but actual basketball at a summer camp. Panztanga was nowhere to be seen, though. She was at home, sleeping off a night's work.
Panztanga, a nontraditional student at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, has worked at CVS Pharmacy as a night shift supervisor since January. She manages, week after week, to balance 27 hours at her night job, 14 hours of work-study and 12 hours of school. She also has five children, ages 19, 17, 12, seven and six.
Balancing a night job and a full academic schedule proves complicated for a lot of students, but many come to schedule their lives around a time when most people are sleeping to prepare for their day and evening work and school days.
Help from her boyfriend of five years, Tommy, helps Panztanga alleviate the struggle of the limited time with her family she settles with every week. She says that she usually gets to spend personal time with Tommy only on Friday and Saturdays, but lately she has been staying in, just too tired to go out like she used to.
"I get home from school, and there's just not enough time. I'm just so tired," Panz-tanga says.
Lawrence psychologist Marciana Vequist says a relationship hurdle that deals with time presents a tricky situation for couples. She says couples should prioritize spending time with one another. This may require more time, energy and patience than couples who work 9 to 5.
Vequist says to spend time with one another during each other's peak energy time, and try to save other activities such as homework for times when not so much energy needs to be exerted.
"Peak time is also a good time for sex. And both people need to be flexible with their scheduling conflicts, not just the person who is working at night." Vequist says.
Flexibility comes in the form of friends for Panztanga, who says she has friends who
Photo illustration by Chance Dibben A night job puts strain on both the person burning the midnight oil and the significant other left to deal with a fatigued companion.
are supportive of her job and her decision to go back to school after a 17-year absence. As president of Haskell Intertribal Cultural Club, she has the opportunity to meet supportive friends and even some in the same situation as she.She says they understand the balancing act that life becomes when working a night job.
Panztanga is proud that her family has banded together behind her decision to go back to school. Some have even learned how to cook at a relatively young age, she says, which makes her more proud than any three-pointer or steal during a basketball game could.
Balance is a key to surviving a night job, William Stewart-Starks. Lawrence senior, says. He works at Target as a night stocker and has worked many night jobs in recent years, and says he feels more productive, financially stable and less stressed out with the staple of a night job.
Stewart-Starks usually gets off work at about 6 a.m. and sleeps until his midmorning classes start. He says he catches up on his sleep on days off and the weekend, sometimes sleeping for 12 hours straight out of sheer exhaustion.
"If he's fired up when he's getting off at
6 a.m., she just waking up at 6 a.m., there you go, two people with a lot of energy and needing a place to put it," says Dr. Kuriansky, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to a Healthy Relationship and Generation Sex.
Stewart-Starks has had a girlfriend for three and a half years. The relationship survived a year of him working 40 hours a week at night and attending class full-time.
His girlfriend, Courtney Ducharme, Salina junior, is concerned with him working nights, she says, but it's an issue they have to deal with. They see each other daily, and once they get into the routine of his night schedule, their time becomes easier to balance.
"It really frustrates me because I know he'll be tired for his classes and I really just want him to succeed," Ducharme says.
Dr. Kuriansky says couples should appreciate that they have the separation. It makes a couple more desirous of the time they spend together.
With so much technology today, Dr. Kurianski also says couples should leave little surprises for each other, such as text messages, e-mails or even things under a pillow, to remind each other that they are still thinking about one another even if not
physically there.
Vequist also warns that couples should not approach their relationship as a to-do list. Seeing your significant other should not be a chore to complete, she says. She has seen this happen and the result she typically sees is that the peak time gets shafted.
It is typically misconstrued that the person working the night job is making more sacrifices, she says.
"The person working 9 to 5 could really be putting more into it even though it's not their schedule that causes the time conflict," Vequist says.
Stewart-Starks has met most of his friends through his girlfriend and the organizations he is involved in. He is also campaigning for a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives, and meets friends along the campaign trail. He says it's difficult to connect with people outside his recreational activities because of his time commitments.
Couples need to recognize that situations, such as the ones Stewart-Starks and Panztanga are in. are not going to last forever, Dr. Kuriansky says.
"That's the thing about college," Dr. Kuriansky says."Things change."
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September 4,2008