I came into my freshman year remaining skeptical of having a campus job. I did tutoring during my fall semester- and made quite a pretty penny from it!— absolutely determined that I was not going to work a campus job if my life depended on it.

My reasons for this were numerous:

1. The $12/hr most campus jobs pay seemed absolutely "measly" compared to the $25/hr I was getting for tutoring

It's all about the $$$$.

2. I'd heard rumors that the university limits how many hours each student can work on campus

Girl... when you're broke, you're broke. If I need, much less want, to work 30 hours a week, I'm going to and I didn't think the University should be able to restrict how much I work. I still do not understand the thinking behind these restrictions— and whether it might be to ensure the well-being of students or because the University doesn't want to pay that much to any given student— nor do I care to understand these restrictions, but I was willing to work under the table to ensure that I could make as much money as I wanted to.

3. Some of the people who work campus jobs aren't doing it because they need to, but rather because they want a couple extra dollars to spend

This wasn't my case. I was and still am a first-generational, low-income student and I don't get much financial support from home at all. I pay my own bills, I buy what I need, and 2 3-hour shifts a week simply aren't going to do that for me. I also was reluctant to associate that image with myself. It seems silly, but I didn't want anyone to mistake me for someone who didn't need to work, if that makes sense?

Part 1: Young broke girl in her first-year spring semester at Princeton looks for job desperately

Fast forward to Spring semester and I was in a dire position. The two people I tutored no longer needed a tutor for their respective subjects, and they didn't tell me until I got back on campus with bills looming just around the corner. (Thanks, I guess?).

I couldn't wait around for someone to take me up on my tutoring skills through Craigslist or TigerTrade or whatever, so I really only had one choice: campus jobs. And within that, only one choice for a campus job so late in the year: the dreaded dining hall.

I was conflicted! I had promised myself that I would stay as far away from the food industry as I could for employment. Working 2 1/2 years at a Sonic Drive-In had shown me that I definitely wasn't interested in working another second anywhere near food, but also, my entire immediate family worked in the food industry all of my life, and I thought that beginning in a new page in my family's history meant staying far away from what my family had done their whole lives.

On the the other hand, it was an immediate job with chances for upwards mobility and a few of my friends worked there, too.

Part 2: Young broke girl grudgingly accepts that which she hates

Fast forward another week or so, and I was filing ugly plastic plates into a giant dish-washer that made terrible groaning noises when taking in dirty dishes; it would then spit them back out, hot to the touch, and we would collect them and organize them in a caddy. It was boring, it was long, and the job really sucked sometimes. Sweeping and mopping the floors seemed useless because they would just be messy the next day, and the compost buckets conjured up the worst smells that I had ever encountered. I was sure that it would only be a spring semester job and I would be able to find a better job the next semester.

(Hint: It wasn't just a spring semester job. I wasn't able to find a "better" job. Oops.)

The other part of this story that is important to mention is that, at the time that this was all happening, I was also embarking on learning french. Princeton's language requirement dictates that every AB student has to indicate proficiency in at least one language beyond their native one. Many students already had that other language, and often two or three other ones, too; but me? Maybe I could have tested out of Spanish, but I mistakenly thought that picking up a new language would be a fun, exciting, and not at all stressful endeavor.

**If you guys haven't picked up on it yet, our young heroine has a really bad habit of assuming that things happen certain ways, and she is most often wrong.**

French has been, by far, one of the most challenging and often annoying endeavors I have ever embarked on. Intro classes are hard; they meet every day in the week, there's always work to do, not to mention that French is not a phonetic language.

Also not to mention- our young heroine has two problems: she has a hard time doing daily homework, and she also has a hard time fearlessly practicing new languages with those around her who also speak the same language.

Moral of this part of the story? French and the dining hall job I had were seemingly the bane of my existence. What comes next may actually shock you.

Part 3: Young broke girl quickly learns that the dining hall job might actually be more of an advantage than she thinks

It all started one day, during a week when I was ready to take French by the horns and really practice my verb tenses. These bursts of virtue come rarely, but when they do, I tend to really devote myself to my studies.

I was busy mopping, muttering the present-tense forms of 'être' (the french verb that means 'to be'): "je suis, tu es, il/elle/on est, nous sommes, nous êtes, ils/elles sont..."

...over and over again.

One of the adults that works in the dining hall stopped and watched me for a second, then softly asked "Tu parles le français?"; "You speak French?"

I tried to construct a sentence in french that meant "I'm trying to", but I'm sure that I completely butchered it. He laughed and waited for me to finish my sentence, which took around 3 minutes of me struggling so hard to construct the proper sentence with the proper verb and proper pronunciation. It was really painful for me, I can't imagine what it was like for him. He corrected me, and then went on his way.

After that, I told him about my issue; that it is extremely hard for me to speak French with those around me, due to my own believed inferiority and fear of getting it wrong.

He didn't give up on me, though. It started out with simple sentences: "Comment ça va?"; the french equivalent of "How's it goin'?"

I typically responded with "Ça va bien, et tu?"

This was because it was all I knew and all I was comfortable with. But as I grew more comfortable speaking with this person, I started trying new things: sometimes I would throw in a new adjective or try a completely new question, sometimes I would tell him how my day went step-by-step, and at the end he would correct me, but then say, without fail, "See! I told you that you have it! You have so much up here," gesturing to his brain, "but you just have a hard time saying it! You are getting there, and I'm so proud of you!"

It's amazing what positive affirmation can do for those who are trying new things— I kept pushing the boundaries and trying new things because I knew my informal teacher wasn't going to ridicule me or laugh at me maliciously.

I grew and I keep growing.

Part 4: Young broke girl isn't so broke anymore, and now she has a free tutor, but her job still sucks (now just a little less)

My titles are starting to sound like a Sufjan Stevens or Father John Misty song... I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but hey! Bear with me, the story is almost finished.

Lessons learned for our young heroine are that french is better learned when you can consistently practice it out loud with those who are more experienced, jobs are still jobs and they are still going to suck no matter what, that sometimes it's okay to swallow your pride to be in a better position, and to quit assuming shit about what goes on around her.

As my grandmother says, "You know what assuming does? It makes an ass out of 'u' and 'me'."