<p>Even though I'm in the camp of "school is their work" I thought I'd add that I think S1 did learn some valuable lessons through his summer jobs after HS. He worked in different types of retail businesses, and was exposed to a broader range of people than he had met before. He met people who were or had spent their lives working retail -- some kids his age had dropped out of HS or college. I think it was an eye opening experience, and led to some interesting conversations between us -- about the value of work, respect for others' choices, and about how lucky he's been (that part from Mom!). </p>
<p>I think it's beneficial for everyone to step out of their sphere of comfort and learn something about how other people live. Sometimes that's achieved through travel, study abroad, or volunteering. Sometimes it comes from working at a regular job in your town.</p>
<p>My daughter did telemarketing (6 hours a day) last summer, after her freshman year of college. She was quite good at it compared to most of the others who worked there, and the pay was much better than most other jobs she could have had (even though she never got enough sales to get commission). As you can imagine, she now has a very good idea of at least one job that she never wants to do again!!!!</p>
<p>I tried telemarketing when I was 16. The only job I got fired from ever LOL I actually only did it for 2 hours and they told me that I was not cut out for that work and let me go. I have never been so relieved in my life as I was trying to think of a nice way to say I quit!</p>
<p>Blossom, you certainly have an interesting point of view, no doubt. </p>
<p>However, it sounds like THIS KID, a top & ambitious student, will probably pursue grad school, lessening the need to fill his resume with high school jobs. When you have a Masters, a JD, a PhD or an MD no one bothers with jobs you had when you were 16.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings on this. Zoosergirl has done well in school, sports, ECs, and got her first job last year when she turned 16. With all she has on her plate, the kid has absolutely zero downtime. Leaves the house at 7 am, goes to school, sports practice, work and then home by 11. I think it's way too much, but she claims to love it and is keeping all her balls in the air. </p>
<p>My niece, on the other hand, never had a job in high school and decided that she wouldn't get one in college either and hasn't. Fast forward, she is graduating this year from a top college, hasn't done any internships or lined up any interviews and law school has fallen through. Heaven only knows what she will do to pay her student loans.</p>
<p>So I guess I'm saying that if he needs some help with his work ethic, he should get a job, but if he's going to be hardworking without it, why not let him have some downtime?</p>
<p>"When you have a Masters, a JD, a PhD or an MD no one bothers with jobs you had when you were 16."</p>
<p>True, but there is something compelling about a person who has worked in the trenches of customer service. I can't identify with someone who has never known life as a cashier, counter service, retail clerk, usher, ticket taker, barkeep, waitress... I can't identify with someone who went off to college, went all the way through grad school, got out with their paper and went off to work in a high rise. How does that person empathize with the "little people?"</p>
<p>For our kids, the first priority was school. It's paid off for them both with substantial scholarships. Jobs were secondary considerations. A little work was fine, but not more than a few hours a week. It isn't just clock time, it's the time getting there and going home to consider..when you leave the front door. </p>
<p>Their work was generally for beer and pizza college money. </p>
<p>Me? I worked my way through college (45 hours management). My average "day" consisted of either getting up at 7am, going to classes from 9am till 2, work at 3 off at 1am and then to sleep by 3. Or it was work at 11pm till 7, classes at 9 till 3, some sleep up at 7 pm. </p>
<p>I consumed alot of coffee and viveran in those days. I also got married the last year and drove 60 miles each way to finish my last year. I worked my backside off, cause I had to, it was the only way I saw to get a college education. </p>
<p>But I also paid latter with this lifestyle with my overall health. Going 5 or 6 years with around 4-5 hours sleep I believe has lead to some of my health problems now. </p>
<p>So as a parent, while I appreicate the value of work, I also appreicate the value of being a kid. I didn't want mine to go my route, so we focused on them being better students than I was..</p>
<p>You have a point, doubleplay, but most grad students, phD anyway, have 5-8 years of being rather poor. They get to BE one of the "little people!" ;)</p>
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How does that person empathize with the "little people?"
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<p>I worked as a department store sales clerk in college (as well as an engineering aide at a Navy base) and while it taught me certain observations about petty tyrannies and why they're good things to flee from, having done so was not necessary for the development of empathy. The class/caste structure of a factory floor was another educational experience but that came after college. </p>
<p>If one is a perceptive and sensitive observer, it's amazing how much one can pick up about various situations and conditions. Plus one may have had close family members in any such occupations.</p>
<p>I have 2 S's, a college soph. and a h.s. jr. both have worked for a grocery store since they turned 16 because we told them they needed to work. </p>
<p>S1 sounds similiar to the OP's 4.65 gpa, #6 in class, NM Commended, 7 APs, etc. Whoever said there was nothing to be learned was wrong in our case. S1 started as bagger, then cashier , then customer service (behind the desk). He learned the fine art of people management (a valuable skill) both with customers and the 8 front end employees who were under his supervsion. By senior year he was opening and closing the store by himself on weekends, including tallying all the tills and making deposits in the store safe. He literally had the key to the store. He worked around 25 hours a week during the school year and full-time in the summers. The lessons learned were numerous and invaluable not to mention the confidence it gave him in his own abilities to do an adult's job. He was the only high school age customer service clerk in his store. His grades never dropped. He didn't have to study much. He was lucky it just came easily to him. He had some EC's but not anything that required great time committment. He always wanted to work. He didn't like asking for money from us. He is currently on a full-ride scholarship at a big state u and continues to work for the same chain of gro. stores to pay for his personal expenses. When he interviewed for the big scholarship, the interviewer was most impressed by the job repsonsibilites he had held down all through high sch. while keeping his grades up. S will be the first to say he has learned more valuable lessons from his job experience than anything he learned in high school. </p>
<p>S2 is a bagger/cashier at same chain. He is also a starter on the Varsity football team. The store have been very flexible in working around his sports schedule, letting him work Sundays only during the season. Before the job, he always had a hard time talking to people (strong silent type). Now he can talk to anyone since having to talk to all the people coming through his check-out line. He has never had the same work ethic as S1 and this job has gone a long way in teaching him the value of work (even when you "don't feel like going in") and responsibility. Working a job teaches a different kind of accountability.</p>
<p>I know most of you disagree about it's worth but it has really invaluable for my 2 kids.<br>
As an aside, I can't think of any friends my boys have had that have NOT had part-time jobs. It is pretty much what kids do once they turn 16 here. We live in an upper middle income suburb with lots of job opportunites for high schoolers.</p>
<p>Katliamom, I love reading the pronouncements of PhD's at the Federal Reserve about how a family of four can live on minimum wage. I love hearing from our legislators (most of whom have law degrees) about how there's no relationship between an increase in the cost of prescription drugs and the number of elderly who go hungry every month. It's especially interesting to hear MD's pontificate about the causes of diabetes (bad mom's who feed their kids fast food instead of cooking a nutritious dinner every night.)</p>
<p>Wouldn't it be great if the folks who make policy and run the august institutions in our society had actually worked for minimum wage, ran groceries through a scanner, or had colleagues at work (even way back when) who had to decide between paying rent or the utilities that month?</p>
<p>However, I am being facetious. I hire MBA's and JD's all the time; PhD's a few times a year. I always ask about their HS work experience, even if just being conversational. I don't care if you're a Baker scholar from Harvard (it's quite an accomplishment-- Baker's are prized out there in corporate America); you'd be surprised how many people out there, like me, want employees who washed cars, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, or cleaned out a fryolater, on their way to becoming titans of industry.</p>
<p>Not worth sacrificing your kids health for.... absolutely not. But if a kid's summer plans consist of hanging out with friends to have some "downtime", a few hours a day working isn't going to kill him. Again-- not to fill his resume, not to impress anyone that at age 18 he was on his way to curing cancer, not to give him a work ethic which I'm sure he has.... but to expose him to another piece of the puzzle as he makes his way towards adulthood.</p>
<p>If your main goal is to help your teen develop a good work ethic, I am not sure that this is something that can be "forced" on them, or that one's age when they get their first job is the most important factor in accomplishing this. Too many teens, including those who want to work to start out with, end up with jobs they hate - and quit them at will. This seems to defeat the purpose of developing a good work ethic. Unless they have the motivation or some greater personal need going in (eg a desire to earn spending money), the mere act of getting a job (or being made to get one) will not develop the somewhat loftier goal of developing a good work ethic.</p>
<p>Blossom, fine, you ask even PhDs for their high school jobs. Good for you.
I don't think that's the norm. </p>
<p>This discussion has gotten silly. Severall posts here make it sound like the only way to become an empathetic person (and what are 'little people'???) is to work some crummy job in high school. Really now.</p>
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Not worth sacrificing your kids health for.... absolutely not. But if a kid's summer plans consist of hanging out with friends to have some "downtime", a few hours a day working isn't going to kill him.
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<p>blossom - I don't think anyone has a problem with summer work. Even the OP's kid agreed to a summer job. </p>
<p>But to your point about those who make our policy and run out government--- I would bet that a lot of industry titans had a lot of work experience, many from a very young age, before climbing the corporate ladder. Some of the most unsympathetic people I have met came from those with a very strong sense of ,"I had to work for every penny, what's their problem" kind of mentality.</p>
<p>Hey, Katlia, raise your kids any way you want-- I'm sure they're fantastic, and that you're a great parent.</p>
<p>The question on the table is, is it reasonable to ask a kid who has a lot of leisure time ahead of him this summer to take some responsibility and get a job? I would think the OP would be interested in other parent's experiences. If my experience is offensive to you.... stop reading the thread. I hired an econometrician last year (senior guy, PhD from Chicago, many years of work experience) and every single interviewer commented on how his years in the ivory tower doing analytics hadn't impaired his ability to understand what life was like for folks punching a time clock. Is he the norm in his profession? Absolutely not- it's one of the things that made him a distinctive hire in a field of highly educated, highly compensated, really smart, successful people.</p>
<p>Is working in HS the only way to get there? Of course not. But-- are we raising a generation of kids who are so pampered that flipping burgers or shelving books at the local library is beneath them?</p>
<p>I don't think anyone is suggesting the op's son work a 30 hour a week job while juggling school and his EC's. He's a senior, probably nearly 18. There is three months left of school. During that time, he'll possibly have prom, Baccalaureate, graduation, awards night, and maybe a beach week and family vacation thrown in the mix. Before you know it, it'll be time to leave for college. </p>
<p>My son's high school runs into June, later than most, and he had to be at his university the 3rd week of August. Had he waited to get a job in the summer, he would have worked all of six weeks, if that. If he had waited much later than this time of year to get a job, it would have been more difficult to ask for all the days off he needed for graduation events. </p>
<p>He worked one evening during the school week for four hours and ten hours on the weekends. It did not in any way impact his class work or grades. He had straight A's prior to his job, and kept straight A's through the end of his senior year. The place he worked, scheduled his hours around all of his EC's. He didn't quit or fall behind anything, and still had plenty of free time.</p>
<p>I think it's funny how we have a whole new set of political divisions here: People who want their kids to work, and people who don't.</p>
<p>I only worked in the summer until my sophomore year in college (and I basically took the summer off between high school and college -- worked about three weeks total, and otherwise read Proust, chased girls, and hung out with my mom). But there's no question in my mind that my kids have gotten a lot out of working, and not just the money or the "ethic", which they generally had anyway. They enjoy it. They get lots of strokes from it. Their part-time jobs during the school year were both in shops that are local institutions. They were/are at the center of the neighborhood gossip; they meet the celebrities. Unlike school, they don't have to brood or fret. They see that their skills -- artistic, verbal, "people" -- have real economic value. They are confident that if something happened to us they could survive on their own (pretty minimally, sure, but that doesn't matter to the psychological effect). They see the "team" ethic in operation outside the pretty artificial school context. They feel a lot of pride, in themselves and in their employers.</p>
<p>I think that's pretty good. If I had the sense it was hurting their school work, something would have changed (although that something would have started with TV before it got to their jobs).</p>
<p>My youngest, 15, just started an internship, 6 hours a week...its like her job...she loves it, she does the busy work</p>
<p>For my D, we didn't need the $$ per se, but they have both volunteered on consistent basis with set hours, etc.</p>
<p>Me, I worked in a lumber yard 2-3 evenings a week for 2 1/2 years in HS...married a contractor, that's how cool I was...my friends worked in the mall, me, I learned how to tell the different types of lumber and fi a toliet</p>
<p>The question on the table is whether it is reasonable for a kid to take a part-time job NOW when he is in school and has demanding ECs.<br>
The OP is concerned that if he does not do it, he will miss out on desirable summer jobs. That may be true, though I would not know. The desirable jobs, however, do not sound like jobs folding garments at the GAP and meeting "little people."</p>