Kid 1 worked in a restaurant at 15 and quickly learned that working in a restaurant means you are at the mercy of a manager that can make or break the experience. (Let’s just say the manager broke the experience with the way she did scheduling). When she was 16 she was able to get a job in the field she plans on going into (early childhood education) and quickly realized how much better she would be treated working in social services. She got great hands on experience, was able to determine that it really was the field she wanted to go into and they absolutely love her there and have offered (actually begged) for her to come back to do internships and work there when she gets out of school. She has also shown us that she can survive in a lower paying field by the way she’s handled her money while working there. Seeing her co-workers all having 2nd jobs has not deterred her and even has her thinking about minoring in a field that can be a “side gig”. We can already see how it will pay off in college through the discussions she’s been able to have with her future professors while she was at orientation and how she was able to suss out her future classmates that probably were not going to stay in the major. Admissions officers definitely noticed that she had meaningful experience in the field she wanted to study.
Kid 2 plays sports and goes to boarding school in a different state so was unable to hold a job until summer of this year (his rising senior year). He is working for the maintenance department in our local public school system. They almost didn’t hire him because “boarding school kids don’t do this kind of labor”. Since he’s going into a field that does field work and manual labor (Wildlife bio and conservation), I’m hoping that having this on his application shows he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He also just had a nice little lesson about taxes when he got his check and asked for us to show him how to do a tax return when the time comes. In terms of admissions, I think AOs have been/will be more impressed with the research he’s been able to participate in, so I’m glad that he did not have to make a choice between that experience and working as personally, I think this has been a great experience for him.