When I picture my ideal summer, it doesn’t really involve work. Catching up with high school friends, visiting college friends, traveling, and heading down to LBI, NJ with my girls whenever possible are at the top of my summer bucket list. For most college kids, much to our dismay, summer is a time to revamp our dwindling bank accounts so that we can head back to school in September and spend it all over again. It’s a time to see if we can save up enough to make it through another year. Ideally, a summer job is balanced with time for tanning and relaxing, but let’s be honest, are summer jobs ever what we expect them to be?
During the school year there’s that moment where you suddenly realize you can’t even withdraw any more money; there’s just not enough there. The struggle is real when you face that fact that you can only take out cash in increments of $20 and, if you’re lucky you have about half of that left. At this moment, the days of running to the ATM blissfully unaware of what is to come, and purposely not printing the receipt, just to avoid seeing just how little of your hard earned cash is left, have caught up to you. As you embarrassingly turn away from the machine empty handed you just hope your friends have a few bucks they can throw your way before you call up a generous relative and hope they can transfer some cash, promising (of course), you’ll pay them back (unless they forget about it and you never ever ever mention it ever again).
To avoid the notifications that your account balance has dropped too low- thank you Bank of America for reminding me just how bleak the times are. A summer job is unavoidable. This summer I made the brilliant choice to take on two summer positions. Leave it to me to work the two jobs with the longest possible shifts and least amount of interesting work to do. As the hours drag by I try to stay motivated by thinking about the things I’ll be able to do once I’m back at school. Convincing myself the long hours of boredom are worth it when pay day comes around, although the check is never as much as I expect it to be. A serious side note, college kids should not have to pay all these taxes, it’s hard enough as it is people.
On a typical work day I scroll though Instagram, read through my Twitter feed, watch Snapchats, and pin about 1,000 things that I’ll probably never look at again, just to pass the time. The worst is when you’re about seven hours into a shift and you’ve seen about 35 people posting about their vacations. I’m all for social media and capturing the moment but it’s almost painful when you’re stuck at work and all you see are pictures captioned with “surf, sand, and salty air” and “beach with my beaches.” Cute when you’re the one soaking up the sun, not so cute when your view is a bunch of screaming children demanding more candy and ice cream.
Though there are many things I’d rather do then spend my summer at work, I’ve found that there is a special bond between coworkers that makes it way easier. Whether you knew them prior to starting or not, by the time the summer is over you’re close friends because you suffered side by side in the blistering heat guarding lives (my one job) or serving smoothies to young country club children in their tennis whites (job number two). They are the ones that come in clutch when you’re desperate for a day at the beach and they take your shift or play card games for four hours straight just to pass the time on rainy days. Coworkers can make summer work enjoyable and fun - I mean, I’d rather be on an island somewhere but still thanks guys for keeping me sane this summer. And for all you working college students, we're in the home stretch now, we can do it.
xoxo
Sara
