Awake at All Hours
The quest for rest among college students is even harder for those who work while most are asleep.
Story and photos by Emily Jackson
It’s 11 p.m. As the majority of Bellingham snuggles into bed, several working college students are just getting started.
At Bayou on Bay, Alma Viva LoGerfo is deep in conversation with a regular, preparing a piña colada at lightning speed. Meanwhile, Jyurina Winokur has just pulled into a Whatcom County assisted living home for her second 8-hour shift of the week.
On Western Washington University’s campus, Resident Advisor Jax Rounds is making the rounds through the Beta Gamma Kappa residence halls. Several hours later, an alarm clock wakes an early riser. At 4:30 a.m. Olivia Massot rises to prepare for a baking shift at Pure Bliss Desserts.
More than 70% of students in the U.S. work, but these four working students don’t operate within the normal 9 to 5 routine.
Knock, knock, knock. A shrill bark explodes from inside the apartment. I hear a muffled voice soothe the dog and the door swings open. Katie Green invites me inside as the sun fades behind me.
Green informs me that her roommate, Jyurina Winokur, is sleeping. After a few minutes, Winokur emerges from her room in a comfy gray bathrobe and bare feet. Her long black hair is spun into a messy bun.
“I fell asleep,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“I can come back another time, too,” I say.
“No, it’s fine! It’s just dark in my room.” Winokur flips on a light to reveal a window covered by blackout curtains, a desk crowded with textbooks and a dog kennel in the corner. But the main attraction is the queen bed piled with throw pillows and blankets.
Winokur happily dives onto her bed and her beloved service puppy, Primrose, Prim for short, follows suit and nudges her for scratches.
“This is basically where I live,” she says. “I mostly work and sleep.”
“Yeah, you’re in there all the time,” Green hollers from the kitchen.
Winokur, 18, is a freshman at Western studying pre-med while balancing shifts as a resident care aide at a Whatcom County assisted living home. She works NOC shifts — nocturnal shifts — that start at 11 p.m. and wrap up at about 7 a.m. each weekend. She goes on rounds at midnight and 3 a.m. to check vitals and make sure the elderly residents are comfortable. A medical technician always accompanies her, in case of an emergency. At 5 a.m., they start waking people up for breakfast. During a typical shift, aides only have one hour to nap and recharge.
“Between midnight and 3 [a.m.] is probably the hardest,” Winokur says. “If nothing happens — thank goodness — it’s pretty chill, and it’s quiet, and it’s hard to stay up.”
Winokur stays alert by chatting with coworkers and hanging out with her energetic service puppy. But as night breaks into morning and sleep deprivation begins to take its toll, everything seems funny, so laugh attacks are pretty common. The residents keep things lively, too.
“Between midnight and 3 [a.m.] is probably the hardest.”
Sometimes residents with dementia will pay them a visit in the middle of the night, just to say hello. One resident in particular was a regular visitor.
“She would come downstairs and knock on our window and scare the crap out of us,” Winokur says with a laugh. “She’d be like, ‘Hello? Hello? I’m just checking up on you.’ And I’d be like, ‘Go back to bed — we don’t need you here. We’re fine.’ And she’d be like, ‘Oh, OK,’ and go back upstairs. And she’d come back down 30 minutes later and be like, ‘How are you doing?’ She’d do it every night.”
Winokur said she and her coworkers have built such close connections with the residents that it’s painful to see them go. When a resident suffers from an emergency or passes away, the caregivers often cry together in the nurse’s office.
The emotional fallout of working in an environment where death is commonplace can be taxing and difficult to process. The only way Winokur can protect her mental health, she says, is to numb herself to the idea of death. But those mental barriers also breed guilt. She and a number of her colleagues have to give themselves grace for that numbness, she said.
“It’s a weird juggling act of sleep, school and work,” Winokur said. “And we can’t really have a social life on the weekends cause we’re just exhausted after our shift.”
Like most people in the U.S., Winokur has experienced burnout and exhaustion — partially from the demanding nature of healthcare and partially from cultural instigators. Last year, the World Health Organization officially recognized workplace burnout as a syndrome in the newest International Classification of Diseases manual. Their definition states that it “result[s] from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
Winokur began working in the kitchen of a senior living home with her Mom at 14 years old. The job helped her build connections with residents that would later transfer to her caregiver position. She earned her home care aide certificate at 16 and two years later achieved her license as a registered certified nursing assistant.
“I just fell in love with helping the elderly,”’ she said. “Most of them are really sweet, and they’re really grateful that you’re there, and it’s just a nice feeling being able to help.”
When she transitioned into college, her new employer needed people to staff the NOC shift, and she needed the financial support to complete an online training program.
“It’s a weird juggling act of sleep, school and work,” Winokur said. “And we can’t really have a social life on the weekends ‘cause we’re just exhausted after our shift.”
Winokur earns hazard pay for working the NOC shift, but it comes with challenges. She has little time to tend to her class assignments on weekends, because it’s crucial to stock up on sleep before each shift. And in her experience, those hour-long naps don’t count for much.
“It’s definitely hard trying to manage a sleep schedule, because you really don’t have a sleep schedule at this point,” she said.
But she returns for one shift after another because of the residents — the ones who give her life advice, joke with her and wake her up at random hours. She’s learned not to take life for granted — how to be comfortable with it and accept each unexpected turn as it arrives. She said she seeks to care for the residents mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
“It’s definitely hard trying to manage a sleep schedule, because you really don’t have a sleep schedule at this point,” Winokur said.
Back in the kitchen, she starts eating dinner while Prim dashes around her feet, looking for attention. I’m in awe of Winokur’s matter-of-fact attitude and lack of complaints.
“How do you function?” I ask.
“I don’t,” she says. When I press, the answer is the same. “I go to work, I go to sleep, I go to class, I die a little bit, I do homework, I die a little bit…” She recounts the vicious cycle. “You just gotta do what you gotta do.”
As I leave the apartment, we exchange a wave goodbye and Prim eyes the door, eager to dart outside.
“Thanks for letting me take photos even when you just got up!” I say.
“It’s OK,” she says with a laugh. “I do everything ‘just got up.’”
Sleepless near Seattle
Winokur isn’t the only one who has endured the effects of burnout. A 2018 Gallup study found that among 7,500 people who were employed full-time, almost a quarter (23%) of people feel burnt out all the time, with nearly half of people (44%) feeling burnt out often or sometimes.
The same Gallup study also said that employees dealing with high burnout levels are twice as likely to experience difficulty fulfilling family responsibilities and 23% more likely to visit the emergency room.
These three Bellingham students have all faced burnout differently.
Alma Viva LoGerfo goes to Whatcom Community College and works as a bartender at Bayou on Bay, a Bellingham restaurant. Jax Rounds studies at Western Washington University and works as a resident advisor in the Beta Gamma Kappa community. Olivia Massot also studies at Western and works as a baker at Pure Bliss Desserts.
Although these students perform extremely different jobs, they all share wild hours and face a challenge common among all students: the fight against burnout.
Mixing it Up: Alma Viva’s Story
Alma Viva LoGerfo, 22, is a student at Whatcom Community College and a newly-trained bartender at Bayou on Bay. She worked as a host for two months, then a barback for eight months and has recently been promoted to a bartending position in January. She works for an average of 25 to 30 hours a week.
Her workday as a barback starts at 4 p.m. as she preps and stocks fruit, getting everything ready for the bartender. When the dinner rush starts to pick up, she delivers drinks and food and helps the bartender with anything they need.
When she works a bartending shift, she takes orders, serves food and mixes drinks. It’s a lot going on at once, but she says that the restaurant is a positive environment.
By the time she cleans up and preps for the next day’s bartender as a barback, it’s around 11 p.m. (or 12 a.m. or later if it’s a weekend). Bartending shifts run till about 9 p.m.
LoGerfo said she’s used to supporting herself with a job and managing a course load. She’s always loved talking with people and has worked at other restaurants and bakeries. Still, the late nights can be exhausting, so she tries to stay positive by immersing herself in the energetic atmosphere of the evening. Besides caffeine, the biggest thing that helps her is music.
“We have a little iPod in the bar,” she said. “I’ll just put on a good playlist of danceable music and just re-amp myself up.”
Her music of choice is usually upbeat and energetic, with artists like Tierra Whack, Noname and other “boppin’ female rappers.”
“And toward the last shift of working a couple doubles in a row and also every other day that week, I will just basically be like a human blob… and not be able to function.”
LoGerfo said she doesn’t lose too much sleep despite the late nights. But sometimes she chooses to work too much, like finals week of last fall quarter.
“In the moment it feels really good, and I’m high off the fact that I’m working so much,” she said. “And toward the last shift of working a couple doubles in a row and also every other day that week, I will just basically be like a human blob… and not be able to function. I’ll be like, ‘why am I here, I’m so sorry to everyone who has to deal with me — I just took on way too much.”
People will pick up a shift if she starts feeling swamped, though. It’s a helpful culture and if she asks for help, a coworker will be there. The coworkers are her favorite part of the job.
“There are big family vibes going on there, which makes it a really comfortable place to work,” she said. “We all know that we have each other’s backs, and it’ll be OK.”
Making the Rounds: Jax’ Story
Jax Rounds, 20, studies computer science and math at Western while working as a Resident Advisor (RA) for the Beta Gamma Kappa community. The RA position allows students to earn room and board in exchange for working an average of 19 hours a week.
Rounds goes on bi-weekly rounds at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. and finishes around midnight unless there are any conduct violations or emergencies. Weekend rounds go until 2 a.m. barring any incidents. And yes, he hears “Rounds on rounds” jokes all the time. He’s fine with it.
He also holds individual and group meetings to speak with and support about 40 residents each quarter. Last year he had 54 residents under his wing.
And yes, he hears “Rounds on rounds” jokes all the time. He’s fine with it.
While it is challenging to schedule that many meetings per quarter with a full course load, the nice thing is that he can choose when those meetings are. The flexibility of the job helps when school becomes challenging.
“Your school comes first,” he said. “Obviously, don’t drop your work priorities, but you need to figure out a way that you’re doing what’s asked of you by your supervisors and making sure your grades are coming along.”
He finds that balance by speaking with supervisors. He makes sure to communicate proactively instead of waiting until he’s drowning. He also thinks critically about self-imposed expectations.
“I think there’s a culture of ‘gotta be the best RA,’” Rounds said, adding that this mindset among the student staff is unhealthy.
He thinks if RAs feel overworked, it’s probably not from policies or supervisors, but from their own high standards — they need to separate required work from extra work.
It’s not always good to go all out just because your peers are , he said. Setting individual priorities for yourself is important.
“It should be, ‘What are you capable of doing? What is your schedule?’ Communicate that with your boss,” Rounds said. “That’s how you don’t burn out.”
Early to Rise: Olivia’s Story
Olivia Massot, 20, is studying business and sustainability with a concentration in energy at Western. Massot started working as a baker at Pure Bliss Desserts because she loves baking and has always been a morning person — but says waking up at 4:30 a.m. was still hard at first.
Last August, Massot was job hunting and thought a bakery sounded like a cool place to work.
“It’s intimidating at first, and tiring at first,” she said. “You’re learning so much and [you’re] up so early. But now it’s a lot more comfortable and fun.”
She said it was more difficult to learn how to stay awake during classes in the afternoon than to gear herself up for work. She decided to only register for three classes winter quarter since she just picked up another shift and wanted to avoid taking on more than she can handle, she said.
Massot said it’s important to schedule breaks or sleep a little more and to recognize when to take advantage of those opportunities.
“I used to be like, ‘If I wake up after nine, my day feels so incomplete.’” she said. “But I’ve stepped away from that, cause I’m like, ‘Olivia, if you make yourself wake up so early every day you’re just going to be super exhausted all the time…Let yourself sleep in on the weekends. That extra two hours does not matter as much.’”
She also tries to find areas in her life to scale back because it’s hard to fit everything into her schedule, she said. Massot has a lighter class schedule and she also shortened her hours volunteering at the food bank. Now, she gives herself days off, too.
“I look out for myself more,” she said.