I actually quit my job that I'd been at for four years for tutoring. Sometimes it's a bad decision, sometimes it's a brilliant one haha. Reckoner hit it on the head really... During semester, tutoring is far superior to a retail job imo. For one, it's less tiring. After a shift at work talking to customers (god forbid) all day, you get home and it's just like "ugh time for some skittles and a bath fml" and tutoring is much better in that regard. Ratio of pay to hours is obviously a lot better. $30 an hour for tutoring seems to be appropriate gauging off the AN tutoring section, and you'd be lucky to find a retail job that pays you more than about $17 an hour or so. Even if you got a job at $20 an hour doing reception work or something of that nature, tutoring still dominates. The catch here is that in retail, you can work eight consecutive hours for $20 and hour, and you have to be pretty organised and good at timekeeping to work eight consecutive tutoring hours (but if you did eight hours of tutoring straight you'd have quite a bit of money). Tutoring is also, obviously, way more fun, relaxed, and fulfilling, and the commitments post tutoring isn't that bad to be honest. You can set boundaries with your students. Almost everyone is on Facebook at least once a day, if you tell your students "on any given day, I stop being available for question fielding around 10pm and I'll usually check in at x time" or something of the sort, that can work well. Obviously it's up to you how you mark essays** and whatever else.
It also dominates retail for an in-semester job because you don't have to miss lectures to tutor like you might have to do to meet work commitments, there's no boss that you want to please so you get good shifts on the holidays or any bullshit like that - you can just like, line up four students on Saturday and get it out of the way, or you can have one student a day after your classes for all of the weekdays, or you can have one student a week if you please. That's definitely a huge winner for tutoring - it's totally compatible with dominating uni. That's the downside though, when uni finishes, you can't start working thirty hours a week in the holidays and save up some dollars. This is actually quite a big loss, for me anyway, because I used to make quite a bit in the holidays and just chill out during uni living off the holiday money. If you're smart though, you could save enough money from tutoring that you can still have good holidays and have money left over etc. I mean, let's say you have five students at $30 an hour for an hour each per week, thats $150 a week, so at least $1500 every semester. If you put half of it away each semester, then you've got $1500 to last you between December and March. And it's up to you if you want to take more students or charge more depending on supply/demand/what you want to charge/what people want to pay etc etc.
One long-term downfall is that it's not as good on a resume (well, I don't think so, I dunno about employers but they'd probably agree), and it's also harder to transition into a stable-income job. You might decide you want a home loan by the time you're 25, and when you're 23 you can't find a grad job, but you still need an eighteen month or so trackable income for the bank to consider you for the loan. Having a retail job here means when you hit 23 you've got a much better chance of starting to work full-time etc etc.
Basically everything I can think of. So from someone who worked part-time from 15yoa and who tutors now, all in all, I do think tutoring dominates. I hated my job though by the end of it. That's probably a big factor
, if you loved your job it would be closer to even in my books. Glhf.
**Edit: Just realised not everyone tutors English. Top lel.
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