The Summer Job

From the moment we get our acceptance letters, we are on the track, and though changing lanes is encouraged, taking alternate routes seems to be out of the question. Our jobs should be in the department in which we major. Our summers should be spent working towards a bursting resume. When asked about a major, the next question is always somehow related to a post-college life. Last time I checked, though, majors were our concentrations while in college, not our life after college. And though summers are supposed to be vacations, they are suddenly more competitive than the college application process.

There is a rush to the summer experience that must surpass all summer experiences that pervades every campus. For the vast majority of us that must work, the pressure is on. Because we must be summer superheroes, we cannot just work; we must also be taking classes, volunteering with the local community center and traveling in there in order to feel that our summer experience compares to those of our friends. Feeling tired, stressed and depressed comes with being the superhero student and is supposed to be overlooked. After college is when you will get that restâ_|unless you are pursuing that high pressure career that you are working so hard to obtain. So much is taken for granted when we say that we are working for the summer. In reality, working the average summer job is an experience that provides us with more skills for living, relating and surviving than being a student at Duke can.

People assume that our wage-paying summer jobs have no correlation to any other part of our lives, because they are not standard forms of education, as classes are, and internships have become. However, two major aspects to the summer job are often overlooked. First, working at most hourly rate jobs is hard work, as any employee will gladly tell you. Suddenly you are doing a lot more manual labor than your normal student schedule requires. Days off are most happily spent sleeping. Once you get that paycheck, your excitement and adrenaline will raise at least temporarily for you to go out, and if you work weekends, you'll join your coworkers in a bittersweet hangover, tired and irritated all day.

Which brings me to the second overlooked aspect of the summer job: the coworkers, and overall experience of working with many people of all ages, backgrounds, stories and levels of respect for you, the seasonal employee. Suddenly out of the walls of Duke and into the American workforce, side by side with all of those individuals that we like to call "the majority," "everyday people," "working class America," and so forth, life looks a lot different, and your status as a Duke student does not mean much.

We are reminded of the fact that we are privileged, and even though this summer is being spent working, it is just a summer job, not a lifetime job. We get to leave and pursue that major, or career track, and then leave Duke with a degree. Our coworkers that we leave in August continue as we walk out of work the last day with relief and head back to the student life.

Many people that we are working with are working those jobs every day of their lives, having to deal with unfair managers, no benefits and families to support. Just two days ago at a meeting at work, a fellow employee stood up and started demanding to know why there have been no internal promotions and only outside managers are brought in. He stated, "We refuse to be appeased by little gift certificate bonuses and being named employee of the month. We need money to live, and our requests are ignored while management grows." And the last I heard, his requests were still ignored.

We hear about workplace injustices, but we can never truly learn and understand them until we are right there, hearing it from our own coworkers. No one can know what working a minimum wage job is like until working one, especially with the current job market. The people of America that are referred to so widely are now our coworkers and will be some of the closest people to us for the summer. Time to get over being a full-time Duke student and realize that in the hourly-rate job world, everyone is equal and trying to make ends meet. And through it all, they usually find ways of making the workplace as interesting as possible, unconsciously making work bearable for everyone else.

For those of us who have experience working from high school and before, this is nothing new. But the novelty of it comes with now being on these tracks of life that thrive on our competition with one another in all areas. Working does not seem like an enriching experience to many people, and for many who do work, it will just be a means to get money. But when you suddenly walk off of the path of your carefully constructed future and spend a summer without the pressures of the super student body, you'll be a step closer to facing the reality of most Americans. Even college graduates are searching for work right now, filling the positions that undergraduate students and individuals without college experience usually fill. But if we don't get a job for the summer, we know that we'll have our food points and financial aid, Sallie Mae loans and Duke scholarships waiting for us.