Student loans are bad enough to deal with for those who have them.
70-80% of college students are active in the labor market and about 40% of undergraduates work at least 30 hours per week according to the College of St. Scholastica.
Still wondering if that is a real university name.
Anyway…
But to be honest, most of these jobs that we acquire as students tend to be lousy ones that we only expect to have part time until we graduate.
But why is that so?
There is this myth.
The ‘better’ payable jobs are reserved for graduates and Ivy Leagues.
The flipping burgers and cleaning maids are for lower to middle-class or just students.
Let me tell you a little story.
I don’t want to rant but if there is only one thing you get out of this piece it should be this.
There is no correlation between where you got your education and what you do now.
I know, this is super tempting and I’m sure you know people who’ve graduated with a perfect GPA from Harvard and are doing great, but most are not.
Don’t be stuck in your bubble of elites.
I know hundreds of people, including our two previous tenants who’ve fallen into this trap.
They took out hundreds of thousands of student loans, yet came out of wealthy families which doesn’t make sense without any common sense but regardless, they went to top schools, mediocre jobs, experienced burnout for the rest of their lives, divorced, dealt with lawsuits, started a startup during a pandemic and now have nowhere to live.
The way you spend your money and the financial decisions that you do for yourself are the most important.
Never do it for a title, prize, reward, or appraisal from others becuase college is what you make out of it.
Math can be taught anywhere but how you utilize your experiences and knoweldge to benefit you will make or break you.
Regardless of what you do, every job requires work and every job is unstable.
Never take for granted that position you have becuase it can be taken away immediately during a pandemic or when the company faces an internal, money laundering crisis, cough, cough, Wells Fargo currently.
Of course, scooping ice cream doesn’t require much skill such as creating an LBO model for an investment bank client, but they all encompass skills that every job shares.
-Competency
-Resilience
-Able to deal with tedious tasks, people, and opinions
-Manage time
-Responsibility
-Vulnerability
-Accept mistakes and failure and learn to move on
When I worked at my first job as a tennis coach, I dealt with country club kids.
They were the most selfish spoiled brats in the world but being with them didn’t teach me how to act rich, in fact, it was the opposite.
It was probably the best lesson I could’ve taught myself and if I didn’t spend time with them, I wouldn’t be this practical, grateful, appreciative, empathetic, and all those great qualities that sound like I’m bragging and you get it so I will stop.
Pre-teenage years, I could not sit still.
It still happens but isn’t as bad as before.
I would have no patience and my manager could certainly saw that.
Once I started accepting that picking up sweaty towels, organizing member’s lockers, staying overtime, and being the first person on the court would be appreciated but never written on paper, I became more content with learning how to deal with a task, job, spin everything in a positive sense and help people out.
I could be jealous and I sure was on the hot, sticky court on 4th of July weekend teaching the future Serenas how to hit a ball.
But at the end of the day, those of you who choose to take a job for a learning experience, get out of your comfort zone and want to become a better person, you will go farther in life.
Everything requires sacrifice in life.
From going to college and saying bye to your hometown friends to dealing with rich people playing tennis.
The earlier you can learn how to relax, understand this is life, and part of the job, will set you on an easier path in the long run.
Never Be Ashamed That You Are At The Frying Pan
There are over 330 million people in the US and over 300 million businesses.
Someone needs your help and you are worth it.
It might not be the most glamour thing but understand that the fact that you had the grits to go against the crowd, work when everyone else was sleeping, or having fun, making your family and yourself proud and bettering your future, is most important.
The longer you rely on other’s assumptions and try to please people, the more you will waste your time and money.
Time = money.
So can we really avoid getting a minimum wage job as a student?
It is all about the amount of experience we have and what skills we can put to use.
As a senior in HS, I got lucky.
I reached out to countless Wall Street firms for a position in Finance and CS and after trying for months, I finally got a response.
I wanted to utilize my summer before freshman year at NYU effectively before I sit in another classroom staring at a professor for 4 more years.
Planning on shadowing, not even intern at the company for 2 weeks, I stayed there for over 8 months.
That was the longest and largest job I’ve ever received and it wasn’t at your local Starbucks!
How I got it?
I did something (a.k.a cold outreach) that most avoid becuase:
1) Fear of rejection
2) Failure
3) Spending time with more advanced, older employees
To be unique, you have to be unique.
Nothing will be handed to you in life and the earlier you learn that the more you will get.
I wanted to diversify my experience and learn corporate life before university (not the most sequential order but it came to my advantage!)
But you may be asking, you cannot just email a Managing Director or HR at a company out of the blue that doesn’t know you to ‘try you out’?
And that’s true!
Companies don’t have the time, resources, and energy to take care of someone who is this young and ‘quite pointless’, many would say.
It is expensive to hire becuase everyone is a risk and hopefully an investment.
But they are human.
Age doesn’t matter one bit.
Because I was the youngest and the first intern at the firm, I felt like an imposter working at a company with employees 2x my age.
And it is true!
Most companies will not hire you unless you are a sophomore in college declaring your major and getting one step closer to getting hired.
In that case, networks and connections are everything along with your trusty resource, LinkedIn.
I helped the firm a few years back with a summer activity, kept in touch with the staff since it was a relatively small company back then, and reached back out for this senior year opportunity.
But networking is not introducing yourself, throwing your business card at them, and asking them to help you get hired 3 years down the road.
it is a relationship that needs to be nurtured.
Not a personal one that is more often but certainly needs so excitement and momentum.
No one wants to help you unless they can find reasons to do so!
Send them an article, give them some tips or simply tell them what you learned this semester.
Keep it short and sweet what they all want to enjoy and read.
They do care about you.
Don’t think you are bothering them becuase they did the same to land in their job.
There is always a way to get a more ‘rewarding, fulfilling, and studious’ job.
You just have to articulate clearly:
-How the company will value and benefit from your presence
-You are a good investment
-Your value
-What you want to learn + goal
But before you do this to get the prestige banking job of your dreams, understand that those jobs are not for people like you when starting out.
Setting a foundation early on with a low-key, non-corporate job will set you on a path to do good in the future.
Just think about it.
The majority of people who work at fast-food chains and franchises are teens and millennials becuase they stay there temporarily and want to learn how to handle a position.
They teach you the disciples to make your own defined success in life.
Rarely, no one stays there for 30 years compared to in the corporate world becuase they need new diversity, excitement, enthusaism, and adrenaline, which comes out the most when you are younger.
You should only be jealous and embarassed if you didn’t get that low-income, paycheck to paycheck, temporary job becuase it will teach you the foundation.
As always, make sure you are doing something for you.
You put in what you get out.
If you want something bigger or better, chase after it.
But too much of a good thing is bad.
That title can be great for more followers on LinkedIn but skip the key lessons in a job.
You have all the tools right in front of you.
It just takes a little convincing, willpower, and letting go of fear to reach out to someone who was in your shoes.