How to get work expirience in my area of study while I'm still studying?

Like all 3 of the excellent answers above, my suggestion is to get work and keep working, as long as it doesn't interfere with your studies. Interning or working as an assistant is a great way to meet people, get credits (and get yourself in IMDB account as soon as you get on some semi-serious projects). One of the great advantages to being in a film program is meeting talented, hard working peers. Ideally, you'd find some hard-working fellow students whose tastes and style of work match your own interests. If you can create a niche within your cadre as an organized and talented editor, people will be knocking on your door to no end. Good Luck!

To be marketable, you have to have marketable skills. For an editor, that means one thing: edit, edit, edit. Join local filmmaking groups, find video production companies, volunteer to edit anything your classmates shoot. The only thing that matters is your reel, and who will recommend you. It's not who you know, it's who knows you, so build a positive reputation for yourself. Be easy to work with. Make sure your work on shorts, music videos, and the like gets entered into festivals that give IMDB credit (you don't have to win, just screen), and soon you will have an IMDB page with a nice list of projects you've worked on. Adobe creative cloud is free for the first month and offer student discounts thereafter, so take advantage of that. Davinci Resolve is free. If you don't have a decent computer, build one and you'll save money, there are plenty of sites devoted to helping people build top notch editing machines for low cost (google is your friend).

That's a great question. Consider working on other student film projects, short films and other non-union films (in whatever post production / editing position you can get). It may be as an apprentice or an assistant, depending upon your current skill level with either Avid or FCP. Also check with the local area vendors who rent the post equipment and/or post production houses to see if they may have some sort of positions and/or internships. Good luck!

Well, "work experience" can be a pretty vague term. There's (1) work experience which enhances your knowledge and skills and (2) work experience which gives you credentials. The latter is hard to get at first because you really need skill for anyone to hire you to edit anything.. And per the well-known Catch-22: You can't get the skills you need without getting the skills you need.

That said, you can always offer to edit local indie productions for free -- until you become good enough to charge for your work. If you find an indie production that is paying everyone -- even a tiny amount -- that's a bonus. You've now earned money as an editor. Home movies, wedding videos, commercials for local stores and businesses.

It will be almost essential that you have your own equipment so you can set your hours. An older computer and an older version of Premier or FCP will work just fine. No one is broadcasting 4K and you want something both affordable and practical. Remember: All the films which were edited with FCP before version "X" were edited on older versions.

I use a $99 film budgeting application. A lot of people laughed at me. Said it would be insufficient. But then it was used to create the budget for the second Batman film. I don't get snide comments about it anymore.

You can also ask to "shadow" professional editors (i.e. sit quietly and look over their shoulders as they work).

Ultimately in the arts, it all comes down to (1) who you know who will provide the ever-glorious "third party recommendation" and (2) a reel of your work which proves you can walk your talk. Something you can show and say with it, "This is what I can do."