I went to a school where you either had classes all morning (7:30-12) or all afternoon (12:30-5) and you were expected to work the other half of the day (unless you had really rich parents). They even gave you a job (tuition was really high there). I thought that it turned out a lot of really responsible people. If nothing else, it showed me what kind of work I would wind up doing if I did NOT finish school.
pkbites I say let your child go for it. I held a job through high school, held a 3.7 GPA (with honors and college courses in there) and participated in both Drama Club and Speech Team. And oh yeah I almost forget to mention for Derlith I made it into a great university (University of Colorado) with an almost full paid scholorship.
As long as you keep an eye on your child and his grades there should be no problem with him holding a job during school. If you need to set up some rules he must follow for holding the job i.e. holding a certain GPA, setting a max for the number of hours he is working, etc than do. Having a job taught me time management, which I found to be very helpful when I hit college. A lot of people I knew struggled their first year of college because they had no clue how to manage their time.
As far as the resume agruement, yes, any job will help the resume, even flipping burgers. When he writes his first resume he will have a good work reference. The interviewer will have some type of proof that he is a responsible worker.
In the end though, it does come down to the personality of your child. I think it is great that he wants to take on the responsibility of both a job and school. It shows you have taught him well. As I said before, if you keep an eye on his grades and school work and possibly set up some boundries, his having a job during school could be one of the greatest and most helpful expirence he will ever have.
Derleth, what makes you think that a university wouldn’t approve of a child working? I think it shows a lot more responsibility and maturity than some stupid extracurricular activity (and yes, most of them are stupid). Well, here was my experience, my parents didn’t care whether I worked or not, but I chose to babysit regularly from about the age of 13 until I left for college. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to watch children growing up (I sat for the same child from the age of about 9 mos til he was about 3) and useful real world experience. It unfortunately did not give me anything to put on a resume, which would have been very useful. These days going to university is not enough, you need job experience to get a decent first job, and any job experience will help. Trust me, I’m a recent grad, and while I now have a good job, it wasn’t easy to get. I also did have some activities, I was in all of my school plays (although during rehearsals I had almost no free time between school, work, and play) and I kept my grades up in challenging courses. I wasn’t the smartest kid in my classes, but I was high enough up there with good grades and such that I got into a good university (Carnegie Mellon) with a nice scholarship. I also worked throughout almost my entire time in college, but then the job was less demanding and didn’t take much time from my studies. However, working full time and spending 40 hrs a week on classes/homework is a really bad idea. I did that for about 6 weeks, and it was a big mistake. Basically, a reasonable amount of work, especially part time, is perfectly do-able while still doing well in school. Let him work if he wants to, and just keep an eye on his grades. It may get him a better jbo when he finishes college.
I think it is fine for high school students to have a job during the school year, but it is important for parents to make sure that their kids aren’t being taken advantage of. I was lucky enough to land a data entry job at the local university during my sophomore year in high school, where I was paid better than minimum wage and was not expected to work long hours. Most of my friends worked more typical teen jobs in the food service and cleaning industries and had it much worse. My town had a low unemployment rate which made it difficult for employers to find enough workers for low-paying jobs. Lots of businesses overworked their teenaged workers; I know quite a few that got into trouble for child labor violations and many more that deserved to be. Since a lot of the kids I knew were from low income families and needed the money they were willing to work longer hours than was legal without complaining to the authorities. One of my friends closed at the gas station and then had to get up a few hours later to go to class.
So parents, if your kids can get a decent job where they are not overworked or treated like dirt then they should have no trouble balancing their work with school. But make sure that everything is on the up and up or something is going to give – if not their grades, then it could be their health.
Pay no attention to xelakann, she’s full of crap. (She’s an old friend of mine, so I can give her a virtual noogie every now and then.) I’m glad you had a decent experience at summer jobs. What’s this about college? What did you learn there?
Sometimes I think America is a bizarre place. (I’m assuming most of us on this thread are Yanqs; I know xelakann is anyway.) Work doesn’t count if it doesn’t earn you money? That’s the sense I’m getting from a lot of people on this thread. We’ve gone from a society where half the adults in the nuclear family didn’t work (i.e., the wives/mothers), to a society where teenagers are supposed to. I guess it makes sense to burden a 16-year-old with a 40-hour/week job during the summer and a 15-25-hour/week job during the school year, if you expect that person to work 60 or 70 hours/week during their adulthood. Which is part of the problem.
My mother once told me I had never had a “real job”. I asked her what of the several years I had supported myself with (non-existent?) jobs? Those didn’t earn enough, was her reply. What a shock! This explains why she is so convinced that my dad was a good father. Sure, he’s never lived in the same city with the rest of the family (with the exception of a year or two when I was 9-11 years old). But he brought home a lot of money. So I guess a good father is synonymous with a trust fund in her eyes.
Anyway, I don’t mean to be impertinent but I am sensing a lot of mercenary undertones here, and they bother me. What if you had a kid, who spent summers volunteering or writing poetry or pointing a telescope at some planet, and that kid was happy? What is then that kid did go on to be less of a financial success than her/his peers … but still happy?
And to those of you who think that summer jobs really do teach responsibility and all that jazz … sorry, I don’t believe you. My guess is as good as yours. Part of the deal with adolescence is that at the end of it you’re an adult. Jobs don’t change that. Any of the things that could be said about teen jobs could also be applied to high school, or acne, or any other thing that happens coincidentally with growing up. Causality is what is missing, and what will always be missing until the double-blind test.
so much to say…
- Your son has a job. It is school. You expect your child to fully devote himself to school. If you start letting him put other things on the same level as school, things get out of balance. And any job automatically takes on the importance of school, because you can’t miss your shift even if you have a test the next day. You can’t show up late even if you have to stay after class to have a teacher help you with a concept. A job can’t be secondary to school, and kids have to understand that school is THE most important thing for them to be devoted to.
2.I am assuming your child is planning on going to college. It takes a lot more than simple grades to make it in to college, much less to get scholerships. Unfortunately, the people that look at college applications don’t look at most jobs very kindly. Instead of hard work they see a need for immediate gratification. There are a million things that look a million times better than a job.
- A kid with a bunch of spending money isnt the best thing to have. No matter how much you trust your kid, money to burn leads to temptation. Even the money itself is temptation (see my next point). It might teach good financial concepts if it was being applied towards things of real world responsibility, but it is really just money in his pocket with no strings attached, no accountability and no responsibility. It is just asking for trouble.
4.It’s hard to stop working. Once you realize that you get x amount of string-free spending cash from x amount of work, you realize that you can get more cash from more work. You can buckle down and earn a bit more, even if you are a little more tired during class. It is easy to realize that school isnt making you any money, so it is not as important. Pretty soon a community college looks like a better financial deal than a university. And I highly suggest you look at the dropout rates of community colleges. When you dont have much riding on your education, it is easy to lose track, especially if you are making enough money to keep you comfortable. I know this worst-case scenario isn’t what happenes to everyone, but it happend to way too many people that I know. Money (especially speniding cash) is very seductive.
Far more seductive than delayed gratification.
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He is only fifteen. He still has so much to explore, and its hard to do that when you are working. Joining after school activites and volenteer work is a way for young people to test out different careers and see what they like and what they dont like. My good friend didnt join his high school drama club until junior year. He found out he loved it and now he is studying acting in college. He would have missed that if he was working and didnt have the free time to join clubs just to see if he liked them. Fifteen is far too young to have your whole future planned on a rigid schedule. You need to have time to try things out without feeling like you are wasteing time.
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Volenteer work has so many advantages over paid work. It looks a lot better than work because it implies civic mindedness and delayed gratification, not greed. It is also far more flexible. If you have to change your hours to fit your school work, it is easy. It is not addicting, like work, and you can quit easily with no change in lifestyle if it starts to interfere with school. You also usually get to work on higher levels when you volenteer. You get a chance to meet people in the field that you are interested in that may even help you later in life. In any case, it gives you a taste of what people with real careers do, and good incentive to get through college so that you can have one too.
Thats my two cents, anyway.
There’s a lot of good advice, and some not-so-good advice, but here’s my two cents.
Tell him that he can work as long as he keeps his grades up. Set some standards…say, a 3.5 GPA with nothing lower than a B, and no gut courses.
I think that working while in high school is good. Others have discussed the money and responsibility angles, but there’s something even more basic, IMHO. Working will teach him how to deal with others, whether they be customers, co-workers, or bosses.
Derleth,
Do you really believe some of the stuff you print?
While there is some correlation between success and university attendence, it’s hardly cut and dry. There are countless successful people out there who never had the benefit of a university education (even quite a few who never progressed past high school). Additionally, there are a lot of very unsuccessful people who attended major universities, only to crumble in the real world. Success has more to do with who you are than where you study.
There’s a lot of competition for scholarships. Not everyone gets one, often in spite of supreme dedication to their studies. In these cases, “no scholarship” doesn’t have to mean “no university”, hence the concept of jobs. There are countless people who payed their own way through the university system… I being a prime example. In fact, now that I think of it, none of my closest peers/friends went through the university on scholarships - they all had to invest some sweat to achieve their goals…
I think this just depends upon the kid, and you’re the ones who know him best, his parents! I started working because my father said I had to, when I was fifteen. And as Audrey mentioned, it turned out for the best. I became more self confident and outgoing my last couple years in school, and I credit getting that job, having people in that particular job who became very supportive of me.
If your son wants to do it, then put some limits on it. My grades went up, rather than down, maybe his will too. Tell him, if his grades drop, then he’ll have to give the job up, that should be incentive enough to work harder than ever at both things. Which will bode well for his future, don’t you think?
I’m going to have to argue with JoeyBlades. Community Colleges are a valid option for some, but they are universally hard to stay dedicated to. They also tend not to have the facilities and staff and breadth of classes that can be found at larger colleges.
Additionally, I am measureing sucess differently than you. I’d like to think that there is more to life than acheiveing monetary success. A life of thought and learning is a success in it’s own right. College is where you learn how to think on a higher level. College challenges and refines the brain. Learning is not just a stepping stone to a higher paying job.
I also wonder how old you are. I hear that there was once a time when it was possible to “work your way through college”. No one does it now. My costs of going to an in state public university (about the cheapest way to get a decent education) are fourteen thousand a year. An out of state public university would be at least twenty K. Private universities can cost upwards from forty thousand dollars a year. I’d like you to find a kid fresh out of high school that can earn that much and keep up grades decent enought to make going to school worth his or her time. There is a lot of state and federal financial aid out there, but I will still graduate twelve thousand dollars in debt, which I am sure I will have to work very hard to pay off.
Plus it is hard enough just getting accepted in to a college. But it is worth it. An education is the best investment (monetary and otherwise) that a person can make.
Sorry for the tangent.
Even,
Agreed. On the other hand, universities tend to have a high drop out rate because students often have trouble dealing with the pressures.
However, they often offer students a level of individual attention not possible at larger colleges. Also, don’t underestimate the quality of education possible at a small college. Some of them (or at least, curriculums within) are quite good.
The bottom line is, universities work well for some and not for others. Community colleges work well for some and not for others. And some don’t need either to realize success, no matter how you measure it.
Actually, you and I probably measure personal success with a similar yardstick. I make pretty good money, but that’s not my raison d’etre. However not everyone measures it the same. My earlier point was that there are many people who are successful, by their own standards, who never attended a university. For Derleth to claim that not attending a university relegates these people to the ranks of “slouches”, “layabouts”, and “slovenly fools” is pure, intellectual snobbery.
I’m 40.
You’re wrong, by the way. Part of my job is hiring new engineers. I interview young kids right out of the university all the time who worked their asses off to pay their own way through school. However, I agree that it’s probably less prevalent today than it was 20 years ago, but it’s not because it’s any harder, per se. I think it’s a matter of standards and lifestyle.
When I did it, I found a roachtrap of an apartment with one bedroom and three roomates. We lived off of generic rice, tomato soup, and macoroni and cheese because it was cheap. We used to go to the local McDonalds daily and request as many of those little game pieces as they would give us (no purchase necessary). Hopefully we would win an occasional hamburger, packet of fries, or soft drink. We’d get ourselves invited over to friends houses for dinner and usually do a load of laundry or two. One guy worked at a pizza place, so we frequently got the ‘mistakes’. Not only did we not have cable, we didn’t even have TV. I had a car, but I usually walked the two miles to school (rain, snow, or shine) because I couldn’t afford gas. We didn’t have air conditioning for the summers and we used just enough heat in the winters to keep the pipes from freezing. We squeezed work into all the cracks we could find, just to make ends meet. During the school year, I worked from 6pm to 11pm in a hospital, cleaning up the ORs after emergency surgeries. It was a good job, because on quiet nights I could study in the doctor’s lounge. On not-so quiet nights I got to watch emergency surgeries from the observation windows (I could tell you some stories). Also, it was nice because I could go down to the cafeteria after hours and beg food from the cooks who were still around cleaning up. In the summers, I would lay out and find a really good paying job. I was lucky because I could operate a backhoe and could weld, so there was usually pretty decent summer money to tide me over. I won’t kid you, it was hard - there was very little time for play. When we graduated, we were in hock up to our eyeballs. We lived a rag-tag, beggar-like lifestyle that I just don’t think most kids today would put up with. However, don’t confuse won’t do with can’t do…
Which is about how much I was in debt for, so I’d say you’re better off than I was since your earning power is much greater 15 years (or so) later…
We’re in total agreement here.
Was the walk to school uphill both ways? =)