Day in the Life of a Mom Who Is a Full-Time Student

A new feature giving you a peek into a real-world routine.

an unfiltered look at my living/dining area as it usually appears to its inhabitants

We’re starting a new series at The Pom: a peek into the everyday lives of other moms! Each of our managing editors is going to present one of these, and then we’ll open up the floor for your submissions. (In the meantime, feel free to check out our general submission guidelines if you have an essay you’d like to send our way.)

I’m Amy, and I am a part-time SAHM and full-time student (taking classes three days a week). Until recently, I also worked part-time in childcare and then as a virtual assistant, but made the difficult decision earlier this year to quit my virtual assisting job, which was not actually paying enough to break even on childcare (lolsob) and lean into finishing my degree. I didn’t have a traditional path to college, and I’m only just getting my bachelor’s degree now at 31. I’m studying English and Creative Writing with an eye to teaching at the college level someday following grad school, and in my spare time I read and write whenever I can. I have two boys aged 5 and 2, a cat, and a husband, and we all live in a small house in central Pennsylvania where the water is bad and the wi-fi is pretty good.

I’ve chosen to focus on a Monday in the winter, following the trajectory of an actual day as closely as I can with some notes about where “the norm” might differ.

3 AM: My toddler wakes up crying from a bad dream/blanket kicked off/room temperature a degree higher or lower than his preference, so I tuck him back in and climb beside him into the bottom portion of the boys’ bunk bed. Is this good for his development? Idk, it’s what works for us now. Is it good for my back? Definitely not.

7 AM: The kids are awake and now I am too (yes, I’m still in my toddler’s twin bed). My alarm went off at 6:15 but my phone was in my bedroom and I slept right through it. This is pretty typical and I’d be lying if I said I really wanted to fix it. I just love sleep. I need sleep. I CRAVE sleep.

The next hour is a flurry of breakfast (cereal), showering, getting kids ready for preschool, breaking up fights, finding shoes, and making sure I have all my school supplies for a day on campus. My husband leaves for work at 7:45, and the boys and I leave at 8:45 (although I usually aim for 8:30 because it takes them one million hours to decide which stuffy to bring and to cry about having the wrong socks). In the interim time, I frantically tidy up the house as much as possible (not much) so that my mother will not think I am a total slob. I start dinner in the crockpot: the most basic chicken-and-potato-and-carrot dish you could possibly imagine, with some garlic and onion and thyme and a big dollop of Better Than Bouillon soup base.

8:45 AM: I drive the boys to school. We live very close to the preschool and it probably would be faster to just walk, but I need to leave immediately for class. My 5-year-old goes to preschool 5 mornings a week, and my 2-year-old goes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Their classes begin at 9 and end at 11:30, at which time my mom will arrive to pick them up and take them back to our house for lunch and playtime.

I’ll pause for a moment here for a grandma acknowledgment– if I did not have help every week from my mom and my mother-in-law, I quite literally could not go back to school. I can’t say enough how thankful I am that they each take a day to watch my boys and give them love, attention, lunch, and a safe environment to grow and have fun.

9:05 AM: I’ve dropped both boys off at preschool and now I am taking the fastest possible route to my college campus. Was I wise to enroll in a 9:30 AM class when preschool doesn’t begin until 9? Yes, actually, because this class is required for my major and wasn’t offered at any other time. Galaxy brain.

9:32 AM: First writing class of the day! I struggle sometimes with balancing my appreciation for rules and consistency (such as the requirement to be on time for attendance, and to not miss more than one or two classes over a semester) with the very real obligations of my “outside life.” Having children is not a disability, and yet it would be nice if higher education offered some more accommodations for students who are caring for young children. I’m lucky enough to have had a string of kind and understanding professors who have been generous with extra credit options to make up my absences and tardies, but I’m constantly aware that I am one sick child and rigid-Ms.-Trunchbull-type away from a really bad grade.

10:45 AM: Break between my first morning class and my two afternoon classes. I usually try to reserve a room in the campus library where I can work uninterrupted if I need to be in a Zoom meeting (I’m an editor for the campus literary magazine, and our credit hours are scattered throughout the semester in variable blocks of time). I’m going to do homework now for one of my afternoon classes, and pick up some books I reserved via interlibrary loan for a research project. Then I pay the credit card bill, catch up on a group chat, and check the registration dates for kindergarten this year. My 5-year-old is suddenly morphing from a little kid into just a kid, and I’m not ready.

12:00 PM: Done with the first leg of homework and now I’m going to grocery shop. There’s a discount grocery outlet located very close to my campus, and though I can’t buy everything we need there, the amount I’m able to save on what I can buy more than makes up for having to do an Aldi and/or Costco run later in the week. I eat a haphazardly packed lunch as I drive to the store (apple, Larabar, peanuts, banana) and get a soda while I shop. It’s cold enough that any perishable groceries can just hang out in the car while I return to classes.

1:25 PM: Biology, the current bane of my existence. High school bio was 15 years ago for me, and I didn’t do, shall we say, a stellar job with that. I’m holding my own in this course but only barely, as long as we define “holding my own” as “passing with a C.”

My mom texts an update with the boys. They ate their lunch and are having a not-so-quiet quiet time. My brain stretches luxuriously when I’m working on campus, enjoying the ability to think without anyone singing the Happy Birthday song and substituting the word “poopy” every other syllable, but darn it I miss my kids. I zoom in on the picture my mom sent. My two-year-old has ketchup on his face. I wish I could kiss it off. I wonder who I could ask to babysit so I can go to the township meeting about the new kindergarten building, or if I should just take the kids with me. Surreptitiously, I sneak my phone out again to make a note about finding a sitter.

2:15 PM: Race across campus to my 2:30 literature class, because of course I scheduled back-to-back. I didn’t actually finish the reading, mea culpa, so I frantically skim the rest of the text on my phone as I wait for the professor to arrive. A classmate sitting ahead of me says she didn’t do the reading either, and cheerfully acknowledges that she used ChatGPT to “catch up.” Inwardly, I seethe.

2:30 PM: Literature class. I have to step out midway to take a call from a friend who needs a ride tomorrow to a job interview, another thing pressing on my mind. I don’t have a lot of time to help her out, but she’s been unemployed for two months and is deeply stressed about it. I’ll just have to find time tomorrow. No one bats an eye about my momentary absence; this professor is pretty chill about that sort of thing, and I’m grateful. It’s been an easy A so far, but I’m trying to keep working ahead so in case someone gets sick, I don’t miss a deadline.

3:45 PM: Class is over and I’m ready to head home. I check some emails on my phone before beginning the drive back, mentally prepping for the transition from Campus Work to Home Work. When I was still doing my virtual assistant job, I sometimes pulled over on this route to take a Zoom call, which–looking back–is insane behavior and I don’t know how I was doing that. (By not studying! That’s how I was doing it.)

4:30 PM: Home again, time to relieve my mom and be attacked/snuggled by my kids, who purportedly missed me and practically are now ready to exhibit their worst and most wild behavior. It’s an insane transition every time I get home and I’m trying my best to roll with it. I offer to read them books before making dinner, and they stickily pile themselves on top of me and the couch. My mom makes a graceful exit so I can focus on the kids, and I notice, with appreciation, that she has definitely tidied the living room and kitchen, and dirty dishes are now in the dishwasher which makes my evening easier!

5:00 PM: CAN WE WATCH TV CAN WE WATCH TV CAN WE WATCH TV? Both of the grandmothers are really good at keeping my kids occupied without screens while I’m gone, and I wish I had the strength to continue that, but the reality is that while I make dinner they watch a show. It works for us all. Except today I have dinner in the crockpot so I take the time to bring the groceries in from the car and gather up all the household trash for bin night while the boys watch Spidey and His Amazing Friends.

5:30 PM: Dinner time. My husband has texted to say he won’t be home until late (usually he gets back around 7) so I opt to eat with the boys tonight. 5 eats chicken and some strawberries and apple slices, straight up refusing the potatoes and carrots. 2 chows down happily on everything. They beg for their leftover Valentine candy and I barter a single bite of carrot from 5 in exchange. While we eat, I read aloud from The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth.

6:00 PM: The boys ask for more TV and I want to get a head start on laundry, so I cave. Technically I have a chore chart with different rooms of the house designated for different days, and Monday is the boys’ bedroom, but I don’t want to bother with changing their sheets right now so I tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow, and focus on putting the groceries away instead. There are one million groceries and no cabinet space. I’m not sure how this squares up with the fact that my kids frequently eat like centipedes with IBS, but somehow we go through $200 worth of food every week.

6:30 PM: While the boys watch more Spidey and fight over the baby octopus episode (5 is tired of it, 2 obsessed with it), I start a load of laundry, catch up on the group chat, and load the dinner dishes into the dishwasher. Then I feel guilty about not spending more time with the children so I abandon cleaning the kitchen and bring them up from the basement when their episode is over.

6:45: We play Sorry!, or at least 5 and I play while 2 hops his own pawns around the board and makes a mess of things before departing to do the twelve wooden puzzles he likes to complete every single day. 5 and I snuggle on the couch and read more picture books, a giant stack of dinosaurs having sleepovers and Franklin the turtle learning soccer and the Berenstain Bears going to school and getting a pet and calling each other G-rated swear words.

7:10 PM: I realize it’s getting late and start hustling the boys toward bedtime. They brush teeth, fight, put on pajamas, fight, insist they need band-aids for invisible boo-boos, and hug each other. Then they fight again. I lie down on the floor in a vain attempt to self-regulate. The children climb on top of me.

7:30 PM: I wrangle 5 into the top bunk of the bed, lie down on the bottom bunk beside 2, and recount the incredibly boring firefighter story that I made up on a whim one night and am now mandated by 2 to recount every single night without fail. 5 has to be tucked in a dozen times and 2 needs me to squeeze him with both arms until he feels “safe,” and then everyone needs a drink of water. Then I read aloud a chapter of Freddy Goes to Florida by Walter Brooks on my e-reader and wait for the boys to fall asleep while reading my own novel on the e-reader, My Friends by Fredrik Backman.

8:30 PM: The boys are asleep, and my husband has just come home. I exit the bedroom as he goes in to kiss the kids goodnight, and we perform the tired kitchen dance of reheating food and finishing the dishes and sweeping the dining area and making lunches for tomorrow while talking about the high and lowlights of our days. “Want to watch something while I eat?” he asks, and I have to say no because I still have homework.

9:30 PM: “Homework,” but actually catching up on group chats for 30 minutes and then scrolling Instagram. Oops.

10:00 PM: Actual homework and late-night snacking, which I know I shouldn’t do but it’s been a long DAY and I have peanut butter cups calling me.

10:20 PM: Run the dishwasher, move the laundry over, pack 2’s day care bag for tomorrow morning (he goes to day care two days a week to supplement the grandma care and preschool, so I can complete schoolwork). My husband is feeding the cat, who has been whining incessantly since 6 PM despite being fed at the same time every evening. He asks again if I want to watch an episode of something or start a movie, and I reiterate that it’s too LATE, and we brush teeth and fall into bed and scroll Facebook reels together anyway.

11:00 PM: I read about three pages of my book before getting too tired, and resolving that tomorrow night I will ACTUALLY READ for real, and not go on my phone.

11:05 PM: Open my notes app to remind myself that I need to write a piece for The Pom. Look at my WhatsApp one last time and then spend 20 minutes in the group chat. Perhaps I have a problem.

11:30 PM: Actually go to sleep, annoyed with myself for staying up so late, because I’ll be up at 3 AM with the 2-year-old. The days are long but the years are short, something something sleep deprivation.

I wouldn’t trade this life for a different one, though, and I hope it shows.

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