Coming out of your first year in college, the summer time is a gateway for relaxation and opportunity. It is the time to look for a temporary job that pays well enough for a college student. For others it is time to look for internships and volunteers opportunities to begin to buff up their resumes in areas that they want to work in. It doesn’t matter what you do, the important thing is that you are doing something.
The worst thing that can happen is that the summer comes and you are stuck doing nothing for three months and once you get back to school you have nothing to show for those months.
Timing is critical, once finals week is getting close during the spring semester you should start to contact companies and people and begin to hand out your resume. This experience was a little different for me since I was asked to return and work for a company that I was with the summer before college. It is a small little company and I work part time doing some clerical work.
My first job that I kept through high school consisted of dishwashing and food deliveries, so this was a huge step up for me. Once I started I got a taste of what it is like to work an office desk job. This job has reminded me why I am going to college and working hard to be able to do what I want in life. Going everyday to the same desk with the same people doing the same thing was mind numbing.
Although the job gave me a thorough understanding on how to use excel, by the end of the first month I would get nauseous at the site of an excel spreadsheet. It showed me that this small office america type of job is simply not for me. The pay was good, especially for a temp job, so I stayed and sucked up the eight hours of torture five days a week.
After a little while I began to pick up on certain behaviors that people had in the office and this is when things became interesting. After working here for so long, these people had certain schedules in the office and very specific routines. Each person would always have the same morning routine, would go to the restroom at the same time, take their breaks at the same time, and have lunch at the same time each day.
Whenever their routine would get interrupted or broken then it would affect their mood and work efficiency for the rest of the day. The office consisted of 6-7 people and each person was from a different country. This melting pot of culture and ideas was a perfect setting for some very interesting conversations of politics and life.
Every day that I went I learned more and more of each person and to my surprise I found out that every person working there and been there for more than 10 years. The only person there under the age of 30 had been working there for 5 years after interning with them and eventually just staying after college.
