Minimum duration for high school job to have positive impact

chrisw
Tue, 22 Sep 2015 17:45:06 +0000

I wholeheartedly disagree. A part time job is extremely valuable… not as resume padding but as legitimate life experience. What the OP is experiencing is (possibly) a first taste at the tradeoffs required as an adult - a job is needed but causes undue stress, so what does one do?

Your “resume” when applying to colleges is not so important in the sense that anyone can list anything as something they participated in. Your situation does, however, have the making of a tremendous essay and/or personal statement: how better to show your true colors than to write about what you did when presented with the choice of financial comfort or academic success. No need to dress it up or to overstate things, of course… just discuss what situation you found yourself in and how you handled it. The action doesn’t matter as much as the motivation behind it.

As for a part time job having an impact on life, it absolutely can. You can learn quite a lot, especially if you had only had a couple jobs before, in just a few weeks. Before my senior year of high school, I found myself in a situation where my boss had no understanding of academic commitments over the summer and no respect for child labor laws; even though it was just a summer job, standing up to this man and quitting the job (to my own financial detriment) taught me invaluable lessons about the respect an employee deserves, regardless of age.