The writer is a student at SUNY New Paltz and a summer intern at Spotlight Newspapers.
Everyone knows, even those who don’t pay attention to the news, that with these tough economic time comes a scarce job market, scarce meaning almost non-existent, especially for the younger crowd. Employers want experience. They want to hire employees who know what they are doing to cut down on time spent training. The problem is, everyone knows that with age comes experience, which means tough luck for for the younger crowd. From high school to college, the younger generation has fallen victim to a harsh fact of life — the job market is brutally competitive, and if you don’t have experience already, most employers brush you off.
What this younger generation must learn is that being “choosy” is not an option. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I realized that when it comes to paying for school books, money is money. No one truly wants to work in a thrift store for an unhappy manager, which was exactly how I spent the summer after high school graduation. Somehow I managed, hating every minute of arguing with customers about predetermined prices, but I managed. This was after working for the high school library and a party supply store in the past years.
What I noticed was many high school students tell themselves they have time to hold out for their dream job, part or full time, which is untrue. The simple fact of the matter is you can’t pick and choose when it comes to a part-time or summer job. The ideal way to spend my summers did not include the high school print shop or the household wares section of a thrift store.
Yes, retail is not a desired career choice, but while filling out applications, I knew that some experience was worth the pain. There is no such thing as an “undesired” job. The school, some thrift store? Maybe those weren’t the ideal places to spend my summer vacation, but I had to ask myself, did I really have a choice?
Any experience is better than none, because when the time comes that you find yourself sitting across the desk from the representative of the company you want your fate to rest in, a blank resume is not going to cut it. It’s better to hand your resume over with shaking hands and show that rep you spent two years splashing yourself with hot grease from a fast food joint during college, or that all of your summers were spent as student help in the school library.
Then there is the unacceptability of being lazy. Everyone knows how it is when the school year is over or another semester ends. The schoolwork was done, the essays were over, and I had made it through another batch of final exams. Now all I wanted to do was sit on the couch and veg, which, of course, was not an option. I knew that in the blink of an eye, I would be graduating from college, and making sure that I had some experience under my belt was a top priority because something is better than nothing. The last thing you want to do is find yourself regretting that you brushed off your parents when they badgered you to get a part time job in school.
When the suffering is done, and it’s time to move on to something bigger and better or school has come around again, there is nothing better than handing in a two-weeks notice. The months of working at the thrift store were spent unhappily, but a part of me was proud I had stuck it through. Even so, when I gave my two-weeks notice, another part of me wanted to skip down the sidewalk singing. The next summer, I had to remind myself that the suffering would be worth it in the end. The eight-hour shifts would have paid off, and though each place I had worked was only for those few summer months, any experience would help in the long run.
Just remember this when you’re going from store to store, scouring the Internet for applications: Settling never hurt anyone. It might feel like it when you’re organizing clothing at a thrift store for eight hours, but it doesn’t. Don’t pass up the chance for a job that will make you miserable now. Think of down the line when you’re handing your full resume over with shaking hands for the job that you want to support you for the rest of your life.
