How the Pandemic has Impacted Working Undergrads

Inspiring Minds seeks to broaden awareness and impact of graduate student research, while enhancing transferable skills. Students were challenged to describe their research, scholarship or creative activity in 150 or fewer words to share with our community.

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COVID-19 shutdown the world and changed the lives of everyone in it. What students would traditionally expect from a university experience has been altered. This has forced students to balance already existing stressors, while also adapting to new problems caused by the pandemic. The pandemic has complicated student’s ability to finance their education through employment, whether it is finding work or staying employed. Which places different levels of pressure on an individual based on the resources they and their families have access to. All of this is happening while students are still trying to maintain their grades in their various classes and constantly dealing with increasing levels of uncertainty. On this topic there exists large gaps in the literature on students in the Canadian context. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews I want to explore how the pandemic has impacted the relationship between education and undergraduate students with part time jobs.

Miguel Bernard Bravo
MA candidate, Sociology
Faculty of Social Science - Western University

Supervisors
Dr. Tracey Adams
Dr. Wolfgang Lehmann

Miguel Bernard Bravo received his double Major in Psychology and Honours Sociology from Mount Royal University. He is completing his Masters of Sociology at Western University and will be starting his PhD at the University of Saskatchewan in September. His Master's thesis looks at how the pandemic has affected undergraduate university students with part time jobs. As the first in his family to get a Master’s degree and eventually a PhD, he is interested in researching employment and education. In the future, he hopes to one day become a professor and research ways to improve the conditions university students who work are faced with.

You can connect with Miguel via email at mberna46@uwo.ca.

View Miguel’s work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/208/