It’s summer, which means your days are hopefully filled with sun, friends, sleeping in, having fun… and maybe also something a lot less fun but way more lucrative, a summer job. Whether you secured that job back in March (ha!) or are still trying to pinpoint exactly how you are going to be making that money this summer, you no doubt went through a couple of these stages:

1. Looking for a job

You weren’t seriously looking for a job, but thought it might be cool to get a head start on what kind of work you might want to do over the summer. You were feeling good, too, thinking about all the responses your A+ resume was going to get you.

2. Sending out applications

At this point, you’d found the places that were hiring and BS’d enough application responses to last a lifetime. Maybe you know where you want to work the most or are just hoping for a response from anyone, but you’re still riding cloud 9.

3. Waiting to hear back

It’s only been a week or two, so you aren’t really worried, but you still check your email and phone every few hours to make sure you didn’t accidentally miss anything important.

4. Waiting

Okay, so it’s been a month and summer is around the corner, but you wanted to chill for the first few weeks anyway, hang out with friends and whatnot. You’re not worried.

5. Waiting

So not worried.

6. Checking In

After asking your friends and your parents what they think you should do, you’ve decided to follow up with a few places to see if they’ve received your application.

7. An Interview

That one place you applied to when you were flying high on applications and just wanted to send out as many as possible got back to you and it’s sort of what you wanted to do and sort of near your house but, hey, at least you’ll get paid just contacted you for a phone interview.

8. Waiting

You think you did well on the phone interview and were told you’d hear by the end of the week but now summer is here and you’re just worried the months are going to fly by and you won’t have any money by the end of it. At least you’ll have more time to spend with friends (after they get off at their summer jobs, of course).

9. You’re Hired! Kind of!

They contact you and think you’ll make a great fit but now you have to go through training. Here’s hoping you didn’t lie on your resume!

10. Hired! Officially!

Somehow, you did it. You completed training and start work on Monday. Looks like your summer isn’t going to be an endless flow of doing nothing but hanging out, reading, sleeping, eating… hey, why did you get a job, again?