My daughter waits tables at a summer hot spot a couple miles from our lake place. She works four or five shifts a week. She works hard, but there isn’t another summer job available where she can make more money than this. She doesn’t have to work during the school year because of that, but if she wants to work a bit during breaks she can.
Her first summer D worked at McDonalds which provided ample motivation to do something different the next summer. She had an internship and a part time job in her college town after her 2nd year and a paid research position on campus last summer.
D1 awesome paid internship (rising junior). D2, rising college frosh, worked as a math tutor at a tutoring service in our area.
It’s hard for a freshman to get an internship. My oldest worked for a computer firm he’d worked for in high school. Younger son spent a good part of the summer in Jordan working on his Arabic. Summers after that the oldest had computer internships in CA that paid well even after paying for rents and flights. (The companies paid for flights I think.) Younger son worked for Tufts in the summer. They turn the dorms into a hotel and conference center. He did it ever summer with more responsibility each summer until the last year he was the head student supervisor. It gave him excellent job skills.
@cmsjmt, the OP asked about college aged kids, but kids can have fun in the summer and still do something productive. The idea that childhood should be all fun and games is a very modern luxury. When they come to fill out the Common Application and have a blank for every summer they may regret their carefree summers.
My S worked at a tennis day camp (8-12 every day) and one summer he also worked a retail job. Retail can usually set the number of hours you work, it does not have to be FT. Last summer he did not get the REU or other research opportunity he wanted so he did tennis again and did some volunteer work and went to the beach for one week.
This summer he will be a rising senior (gasp!) so he is much more likely to get his internship opportunities. He could not live away from home unless something provided room and board, like some of these opportunities do.
Son1 worked in a lab on campus, so he didn’t come home much the first summer. He took a short break of about two weeks and spent it with us. He got paid a little bit, so he was a little subsidized. Second summer another lab job, better paying, then a lab job abroad that included room and board but no pay.
Son2 worked delivering food,or as he put it “I am a professional driver,” and also studied a language abroad on our dime.
Son1 found his jobs by looking at campus job boards and by asking professors and fellow students for leads. The job abroad he found by writing to foreign Us and telling them what he knew how to do.
We made Son2 study abroad. He found his job by paying attention to signs in the windows of places we frequent.
When they were younger, late high school, I let them chill for a set period of time, then asked that they do something, anything. That could mean sports practice, volunteering, working, whatever. It didn’t have to be every day, maybe three days a week. I did have a list of volunteer ideas for them, mainly stuff that involved spending half a day working with children or animals.
Before this gets too long I will just say that once kids have been away to school, it is hard to come home, and even harder to come home and do nothing. I encouraged the kids to either work on campus or to have work lined up before they got back home.
Thanks for starting this thread. Lots of good ideas. Daughter is thinking about this now as well.
Since starting college my son has had paid internships (in his major) each summer (and was home for only 2 weeks this past summer). His twin was lucky to have commissioned work (in her major) this past summer. She also did house/pet sitting for friends.
In high school, S lifeguarded/taught swimming during the summer (and had club swimming) and his sister did volunteer work and petsitting.
As I already wrote, my kids did jobs and internships in their respective fields every college summer and these had to pay enough money to support themselves since they were away from home, and so they could not do unpaid work/internships.
As others have pointed out, this thread began with an inquiry regarding summers during the college years, not high school.
But to respond to this comment about how summers during high school were spent…
During the high school years (as well as even younger than high school), my kids went away every summer to programs in their areas of interest. These were not academic in nature. They were performing arts camps and also one did two summers of travel programs. My kids LOVED these experiences. It was a big highlight of their year. Even when I grew up, I went to sleep away camp for 10 summers for 8 weeks every summer and it also was a big highlight of my youth. It IS part of enjoying one’s childhood!! The activities are FUN! And if it is a specialty program, it is around a child’s passion. For my kids, they chose to do these things (nobody made them, and they begged to go) and for them, it WAS “idyllic!!” They were kids and did kid things! Then, the summer prior to starting college, they stayed home for the only summer ever since they were VERY young, because we wanted them to experience earning money as spending money to take to college, which I think is also a good experience. For one daughter, her two paying summer jobs that summer prior to starting college were even in her field…theater!
When I was in college I went away to work at a conference center in the mountains. It was the BEST summer ever. This one was church based but i know of several that are not. I hope my daughter does something similar at least once. I’ve always said I had a great balance of summer experiences and hope my child does the same:
1 summer of moving back home, working a part-time job as a lifeguard and taking one class at the local jr. college.
1 summer of going away to the mountains to work and play with an entirely new group of friends. No school.
1 summer of staying at school and working a part-time job and taking one class per summer semester.
1 summer with a career based internship.
Most likely, mine will be blowing things up, jumping out of aircraft, and learning to kill with precision. The Army is pretty partial to those things.
My daughter took community college courses after her freshman year. She worked as a lifeguard after sophomore year and as a restaurant server in her college town after junior year. She applied widely for internships in her field but didn’t find one, so she just got a job that provided some spending money and work experience. FWIW, we were perfectly happy, and could afford, to provide our daughter with spending money, so she didn’t need to work for the money. She DID need to work so that she had some work experience, even if it was at a minimum wage type job.
My college junior spent the last three summers as a sailing instructor at a kids sailing program at the local yacht club. He hopes to have an internship this summer. My older daughter (now a high school math teacher) used to work parking at the county fair (ran forb4 weeks), my middle son worked a variety of jobs including retail, tennis camp, etc… Summer between junior and senior year he did a travel study program in Greece.
D1 took a class at our local university the summer after first year of college. The credits ended up not transferring but that was okay. This piqued her interest in Africa and she ended up doing a study abroad program in Ghana. After sophomore year, she worked here at the camp where she had started working at age 14. I can’t remember what she did the summer after junior year.
D2 did a month-long program for women students considering getting a Ph.D. in math after her first year of college. After sophomore year, she worked for one month at a math camp for middle-school students and one month here, at an entity associated with the university. She contacted the entity and said she was willing to do an unpaid internship; they ended up paying her. After junior year, she worked at an economic consulting firm. By early this year, she had a job lined up for post graduation.
DD attends a LAC out of state and doesn’t drive. Local places in our area want someone who can continue to work at least part time during the school year. Freshman year she was told by employers offering internships that they were only interested in juniors and seniors. That summer, she took a couple of classes at a local community college. The summer after sophomore year, she worked on campus at the Career Advancement Center, no doubt because she had worked there during the school year. After junior year, she again worked on campus as some type of special assistant working on special projects; I think her boss got some type of extra money (grant?) and her boss might have even been the person she interviewed and helped to hire the summer before. At the end of the summer, DD was the student coordinator for freshman orientation, and there was a stipend associated with that.
DD plans to have a paid internship next semester, her last semester of school. She pretty much has one lined up that can turn into job after she graduates (with a major in history and minor in education), but today she told me she is working on additional internship applications as she knows that it can be risky to place all her eggs in a single basket.
FWIW, from the time she entered college, DD has her sites set on getting a job at the Career Advancement Center so that she could get first crack at learning about internships as they came in.
The summer after freshman year, D1 tried to get an internship but was unsuccessful. She did, however, get a research assistantship on campus that paid enough to cover her food and housing. She was also able to take a class.
The last couple of weeks, she has been interviewing for internships for next (sophomore) summer that will help her gain experience and hopefully earn a little money. She has one offer so far (just came on Friday).
D1 knew she wanted to work in IB since high school, so her summer activities were all building blocks toward that end. The first summer, she worked 30+ hrs at an educational website and tutored. Second summer she was an intern at an equity research firm, the following fall she worked part time at a major IB while studied abroad. Third summer (junior year) she was a summer intern at an IB, which lead to a full time job.
D2 is pre-law. The first summer she babysat for a family and also worked at their family book publishing company. The second summer she worked at a legal aid and third summer at a district attorney’s office. At school she is doing work study which would help with law school application. In D2’s case, she thought initially she wanted to do corporate law, but through her internships she thinks she may want to do public services.
I think you are talking about HS summers. I am talking about college summers.
DS is premed and poor, so he did a mixture of research, working as a groundskeeper and volunteering . One summer he was lucky enough to go abroad with his school at no cost, so he barely worked. The following year, he had a paid research job at his college that he is continuing this year. The key to a great summer is to work with the career center early, look for alums in your area, and to hit the pavement in person on winter holiday break for for summer opportunities.
D. could not find any summer job, she was ready to take any dirtiest whatever job and applied to lots of places, I believe she sent over 30 applications. She was not accepted to the summer Research program either. She did a bit of volunteering at Medical facilities and doc’s shadowing, but not much. She primarily relaxed, slept in, spent tons of time with her HS friends every summer, not just the first one. Good thing that she took advantage of relaxed summers in UG! There is no such thing as free summers in Med. School that she attended after college. She did not have to work, she was on full tuition Merit at college, but she worked at her college during academic year, her job had the summers off. She also was volunteering and interning at Med. Research Lab during college academic years, so she had all her medical ECs covered basically during academic year. She did not need to take summer classes either.