Full-time job, out of time Student

That’s what Kate Premo, who is about to start her second semester toward a master’s degree in strategic communications at Columbia University, has started to figure out. Now that her first semester is over, she has learned what may have to go, what schedule she should try for and how her boss will react to her extracurricular life.
“I absolutely had to change my schedule,” she said. In the beginning she went to the gym every morning at 5:30 instead of in the evening. But she learned that if she went to the gym just a few times a week, that was enough.”
And then there is that pesky thing called work. Premo works as director of communications in the New York office of Annapolis, Md.-based Niermann Weeks, which sells home furnishings to designers, and she has tried to make the transition easy not only for herself but also for her boss.
There were times when she had to miss school because she was traveling for work, and there have been times when she asked that her job be flexible because of school. As much as she could, she “was very careful that the things I was doing wouldn’t impact work as far as the schedule goes.”