So I am a current 11th grader, and I have recently put the idea of getting a job in a restaurant (likely fast food) on the table. What are the possible perks and drawbacks of taking a restaurant job, not only from a college admissions viewpoint but in terms of stuff like experience, personal finance, social life, and more?
Also, is there a consensual ‘tier’ of jobs that judges a restaurant job as ‘inferior’ to, say, a tutoring job?
A job counts as an extracurricular.
If you are eligible (age 16+), you may want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as you can, since restaurants where people eat indoors are relatively high risk situations for virus spread.
Thanks for the response! I am 17 years old, and received my 1st dose (Pfizer) this past Tuesday since everyone 16+ is available at where I’m from (Long Island, NY) so they shouldn’t be pitfalls for me.
Hey, im a senior who works at a salad/smoothie place (basically fast food environment but healthy) and all i can say is a job is a job. Working at McDonald’s is not going to give you an advantage/disadvantage compared to a job at a bookstore. IMO, it sees kinda odd to seek out jobs for… college apps. With me and my friends, we wanted jobs because we wanted money, lol. In terms of social life, I’ve definitely missed things + been late to events because I work on Saturdays, and have definitely struggled with schoolwork when I come home from work and all I want to do is sleep. Then again, I had my own money to spend + save, so there’s def pros and cons to both. I also want to say that in terms of experience, the people I know who have had food service jobs in high school vs people who haven’t had a job / haven’t worked in food industry are just generally more mature.
just a slightly different idea - when I was in high school & college breaks I worked in a nursing home kitchen as a dietary aide. What I liked was at night I worked a 4 to 8 shift and could leave when we were done which was aound 7:30. We had a meal break with free food so I either ate there or my parents had food ready for me to eat at home. It was about 2 miles from my house so a quick commute. I could be home showered etc and ready to do homework by 8:15 or earlier. Sometimes I did easy homework earlier but that varied. On weekends when I first started it I worked the 4 to 8 shift but over time I was working a day shift on non school days.
The work was not what I call fun but I worked with other teens at night so we made our own fun and as long as we got our work done and weren’t loud etc it was fine. I also got to know some of the residents who would go across the hall to activities and to the dining room on a routine basis. If I had a test the next day and had someone to switch with my boss had no problem with that because she knew that students didn’t always know ahead of time. The one negative is getting called in to come in early when they are short staffed. They knew I was home from school around 2:45. This was before cell phones but they would call my mother to leave a message asking her to tell me to come in as early as I could. My job had shift/weekend pay differentials which may still be common.