<p>If you have any kind of skills that a Carleton office might find useful, list them on your work-study preference sheet (that is if you don’t get snatched up by lunitari). Things like graphic design, making flyers, data entry, answering phones, customer service, computer troubleshooting, programming, face-time in front of an office, etc. will make it much more likely that you get good campus job placement. Likewise if you have interests in things that are handled by a Carleton office, indicate that. You could learn more about, say: academic administration by being in the Dean of the College office, planning and executing events from Campus Activities, the campus network from ITS, finding internships and writing resumes from the Career Center, how financial aid actually works from Student Financial Services, Minnesota prairie ecology from Arb crew, publications from…whatever the publications office is called, media production from PEPS or CAMS, insider admissions process details from the Admissions Office, etc. Not that these are necessarily glamorous jobs, but office work (or physical labor in the case of Arb crew) is a lot less boring when you have an interest in the matters handled by that office.</p>
<p>Of course, you could still get placed in food service or custodial (and many freshmen will), but it’s less likely when there are obvious offices to place you based on your skills and interests. I was lucky enough to get placed in a office I really connected with in my time at Carleton and certainly got as much out of that experience as I did any of my classes. The work-study culture where almost everybody seems to have a campus job and a good percentage of them take pride in it is something that is fairly unique to Carleton and an underappreciated feature of the school.</p>