<p>For those parents who have kids who can do it all, how do they do it? What is the secret? I have 18 and 17 yr. old sons (junior and senior) and aside from a summer job have not worked yet. It's impossible. Schoolwork is too heavy, AP's, and they are involved in volunteer work, partly mandatory by the school. My daughter tried working as a senior and the demands of the job, they wanted her to work 4-10PM, were too heavy . The situation is somwhat difficult as there comes a point when young men need employment.(gas money, dates) So it's a pinch economically and they need to move on with life but working right now isn't feasible. Is anyone else having this problem at home? I keep quiet about my feelings on this issue but the boys need to grow up and , I dare say, be away from the books alittle?</p>
<p>Yea, I'm kind of wondering how other kids work like 6 hours a day and still get every other thing done.</p>
<p>In our community many of the juniors and seniors work during the school year, including some, but not all, of the students taking high level academic classes. My kids did not do this, as they were both involved with time consuming activities (sports or band, school clubs, and volunteering) and AP courses, as are your kids. My son who is a junior in college has worked a lot since graduating, beginning with the summer after senior year. My daughter who is a senior in high school is now starting to look for a summer job, and may have to start before school is out, which would be difficult since she has a lot of scheduled activities plus four AP tests between now and June. Both my kids expressed that they "felt spoiled" because they didn't work during the school year and saw many of their friends working. My daughter was recently awarded an academic scholarship of $7000 per year at her ED school (we do not qualify for financial aid), and we have told her that she shouldn't worry about not working - it is highly unlikely that she would have put $28,000 in the bank by working during high school, and by putting her efforts into doing well in school both academically and in her ECs, she has essentially earned that impressive amount of money. I don't think you should worry about your sons not "growing up" because they don't work during school. If they are busy with worthwhile pursuits during school and work during the summer, that shows sufficient responsibility and perhaps they can save the summer earnings to spend for gas, dates, etc. during the rest of the year.</p>
<p>My first son did not work during high school. My second son works at a pet boarding kennel. He works about ten hours a week, more during holidays. Fortunately the kennel is just half a mile away, and they are very considerate of kids' high school schedules, so he is able to schedule his work on days his school load is not too heavy.</p>
<p>As for getting it all done, THAT is what does not happen. I really don't think it is possible to give 100% in school, have a full load of EC's, work part-time, AND have any kind of social life. Something always suffers. My son has (sad to say) learned just how much he must do to get an A, and that is all he does, except for those classes that really matter to HIM. At times he has little social life, especially now that he is in the process of applying to and auditioning for music schools. He finds time for what matters most to him, and for what is most urgent, and the rest tends to fall by the wayside. (As for the last time he had a clean room...<g>)</g></p>
<p>i can tell you from my experiences...</p>
<p>I got a job the day after i turned 14 at a local grocery store (small "mom and pop" store). I worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after school from 3:30-6 and I worked Saturday mornings from 9-11. I had LEO club meetings after school on Friday's. I didn't take any AP classes, but had plenty of work with the classes I did take. I did this after 6pm when I got home, and on weekends. </p>
<p>Also you should check the labor law's for your state - The minor labor laws for PA are a bit tricky. I won't type them in word for word, but from what I can remmeber: Under the age of 16 can't work past 7PM, must have one break within the first 5 hours, and can't work more than 8hrs+break per day. They also have to have a day off during the week at some point. There is also limits to how many hours they can work per day during school and how many hours they can work per week during school and during the summers. These laws are a little bit different for children ages 16 and 17, but they're all pretty similar. (they can work later than 7PM).</p>
<p>hope this was of some assistance.</p>
<p>p.s. my little sister has my old job, and she's in 10th grade right now. They don't have nearly as much work for her as I used to do, and she is only working like 5-6 hours per week ($30 dollars). She's been using that money to pay for her car insurance and cell phone, but is having trouble saving up money to buy a car. She too started working there the day after her 14th birthday, and has saved about $2,000 for a car so far. She's also looking for another job.</p>
<p>Daughter had an afterschool job all through years of high school. She worked an afterschool counselor from 3-6 p.m. Job was flexible enough that she was ablr to give them her work schedule when she somthing to do for school.</p>
<p>I should have said that my kids were paid for some things during high school - my daughter as a teacher of a twice-weekly after school class for elementary kids last year, and my son as a tutor several hours per week as a senior. When I think of "work" during high school, I think of jobs at the mall, grocery stores, restaurants, BestBuy, etc. which are very prevalent around here. I didn't even think of the paid activities I just mentioned when I thought of "working".</p>
<p>Rarely do I hear of someone from the core "AP" group at my school working during the school year; it is just too difficult with an hour of homework for each of seven classes on top of sports, newspaper, other extracurriculars, etc. This seems to be the situation for your sons. Here, students tend to stock up on money during the summer for the academic year - a lot of students lifeguard (these jobs are abundant due to five local parks along with another five or so clubs), a greatly preferred job with the perk of getting paid to suntan! ;) Other students seeking more money get a job filing at one of the many local law firms or real estate agencies through word-of-mouth - a parent's friend's brother-in-law works there and knows of a vacancy, etc. Perhaps you could ask around for your son?</p>
<p>I did have one friend who worked during the school year, at a local library - she got a lot of downtime when checking out books at the front desk that she used to do her homework. Maybe working as some sort of receptionist would also allow your sons to do this? I know of a few students that work the front desk area at gyms; besides generally overseeing the area, they're not responsible for much besides cleaning the machines and checking members in, so they have a lot of time to do homework.</p>
<p>Best of luck for your sons and their job searches!</p>
<p>now that i'm in college it's a bit different.... right now i work at a job over the summers (probably made about 7k-8k/summer before taxes this past summer), and i work at a different place while i'm at school. i work with harley-davidson merchandise, selling it to the harley stores and dealerships.. stuff like that.. it's a nice job, i can make my own hours, and i work whenever i want to..</p>
<p>i'd just like to add that during highschool pretty much everyone I knew worked. there's lots of jobs at grocery stores and whatnot, and a local farmers market where many kids choose to work. my 17 year old cousin that lives here has been working at a local pizza resteraunt for three years now.</p>
<p>My son does a variety of things (btw, he is part of the core AP group). For ongoing work, approximately 10 hours a week he works at the local vet clinic cleaning the clinic (every other evening) and taking care of boarded animals on the weekends. The pay is not great, but it is steady money for gas and such. The bigger money comes from web site development and occasional wedding DVDs (not only does the wedding couple pay, but relatives order additional DVDs). He also does pet sitting for neighbors (more lucrative that you would think for not much work). And one other source of money is selling DVD highlight reels of the football season (he's the team's film technician). That money is great, but if you divide the amount by the number of hours that he's put into making the film, the hourly rate is not good. He's putting away a tidy bit for college. My wife and I have agreed to pay true COLLEGE expenses not included in his scholarships (room and board and books), BUT he is responsible for his own spending money. Just since he started saving about 5 or 6 months ago, he's accumulated more than $2000. It would have been more, but he's also responsible for the spending money he needs now (gas, dates, etc).</p>
<p>My kids have worked at McDonalds just one day a week or as busboy at a country club one day a week. Both came from working in the summer. Since they were good employees during the summer, they were able to get a very limited shift during the school year. During the holiday season, the girls worked at department stores and and as waitresses, The summer before college, all of my kids worked double shifts and also gave private swim and music lessons to make as much money as they could. I would like my senior to graduate early and work until September as he has cost us the most and we have squandered a good deal of money on him where we paid for things and he could not go. Half year tuition at his school would be a nice chunk of change. Also we already know that we will be paying full freight for him. He also has the least amount put away from his other jobs as he took many non paying positions and had to pay for a lot of stuff due to his carelessness. He worked very limited hours this past summer. </p>
<p>But the others I never pushed the matter as I felt that the schoolwork was more important. I will have to say they were very, very busy with ECs as this one is. But the older ones knew that we were strapped and were conscientous about contributing. This one has been raised during a time where we do have the money. I am not so sure that this has been a good thing. I did not do a very good job with him in stilling money and work ethics and values.</p>
<p>"Yea, I'm kind of wondering how other kids work like 6 hours a day and still get every other thing done."</p>
<p>That's easy. They just fail or do everything half way.</p>
<p>I never worked. I'm going to work at the Tutoring Center at my college starting this semester.</p>
<p>I've been lucky enough to never have to work, either, bluealien. I'm also usually away for a good portion of the summer - and that makes finding a summer job somewhat more difficult.</p>
<p>I do think the work situation is a bit different for kids who are heavily involved in extracurricular committments compared to those who are not. I think the thing is for kids to be busy outside of school hours in one way or the other. Here, many kids work. I think the ones who work the most are the ones who are not too involved in ECs (and subsequently tend to be those not in the hardest classes but that is not totally across the board but a tendency). For instance, at both supermarkets in town, every person waiting on me last year seemed to be my older D's peers and now it seems like every kid working there is in my younger D's class. Those kids are not in ECs though. Some kids in hard classes and many ECs do have jobs too but perhaps less hours. </p>
<p>My oldest child graduated HS last June. She took the hardest classes and then some, and got straight A's. She had between 3-5 hours of homework per night and about 12 hours on weekends. Her ECs were every afternoon and night and she got home between 7 - 9 most nights and her ECs were every Saturday and then also all Sundays in winter. That does not leave much time to work. However, she did work some in both her junior and senior year. She got a job at a local country inn helping the owners serve dinner on Saturday nights. But in junior year, she only worked during foliage season and winter break because as much as they wanted and needed her in ski season, she could not stay up late Saturday nights because she not only had raced all day on Saturday but had to be up as early as 6 AM on Sundays to go to ski races or training and she had Hip Hop dance class out of town on Friday nights. So, she kinda only worked in certain seasons. She saved very penny. Then in senior year, she worked Saturday nights in both foliage season and all winter in ski season because she did not race on Sundays, though trained on Sundays but could sleep til 7 ;-). Then, our dance studio hired her to teach a tap dance class second semester to mostly middle school aged girls because the teacher had to take a leave (and my D had tap danced her whole life) and she got paid to do it. She had some conflicts with some tennis tournaments but they allowed my other D to substitute teach (also an advanced tap dancer) and my other D paid her the salary for those days. </p>
<p>Then for the summer after senior year, we said she had to stay home and work as she had gone away to programs every summer up til then. She got two jobs, one teaching in a summer childrens' day program at a tennis club and the other working at a restaurant at night. She saved up a lot of money from these jobs to take to college. She started the restaurant job the last few weeks of the school year because some of her ECs had lessened by then. When she was home over this XMas, she offered to work on Christmas day at the country inn so their current HS worker could take off and our D does not celebrate Xmas. The tennis club wants her back this summer, having asked her to meet with them over XMas when home from college and then offered a job for next summer, but she is thinking of other summer plans. She asked them if she is only home for August, could she just work for them in August and the director said yes. I think sometimes once a kid works some place and they like him/her, there are chances to return in the future and also flexibility. </p>
<p>My younger D, currently a Junior/Senior, also is in the hardest classes and has a full array of ECs that involve every afternoon, every night, all day Saturday and sometimes Sundays (every Sunday all fall). She normally does not get home before 8 PM from these activities but sometimes it is as late as 11 PM (for many months this was the case) and some nights 9 PM. She then has all her homework. Fitting in a job is not really possible. But she does babysit when she can. She also is traveling quite a bit now for all her college auditions. I would like her to work this summer like her sister did before college. She has not yet set any of that up. However, she is being allowed to go back to her summer program for three weeks (usually goes six) as a gift she was given (she was given a gift to go to France with school in April by her grandparents but much preferred to go back to her beloved summer program, her 8th year and so they said she could do that instead, even though she was supposed to work as we were not going to pay for summer programs once she graduated). Kids can attend that program up through age 18 and some do who are about to enter college, but in her case she is still 16 and did not want to give up going back due to graduating early. So, now she is going for three weeks but hopefully will figure out paying jobs for the remainder of summer. She happens to have saved up a great deal, as much as her sister did from all her jobs, because she had been paid for some professional acting jobs when younger and we made her save that to take to college and so in the end, she did earn money too. As an aside, I recall when she was 8 years old, she earned money because she was very into making this Sculpey figure sculptures and decided one day to show them to a local gift shop and the owner liked them and decided to sell them on consignment and they actually sold and we were like, wow, our 8 year old is earning money for her "projects" and it was a lot for an 8 year old! Often, I find my kids have more money than I do! ;-)</p>
<p>I think kids who take hard course loads and very heavy EC loads need to put that first but I like the idea of kids doing work, even just a little, if they can, for the experience itself but also to earn some money to take to college. I see the summer before college as one prime opportunity and then if they can find some flexible jobs like my kids have, in between, even if just five hours per week, they still benefit from the experience, plus have quite a chunk of money of their own to use in college (though we also contribute to their spending money). I think even busy kids might be able to find one night a week on a weekend to work or a flexible sort of thing like giving lessons or even babysitting or some other "service". It need not be a 20 hour per week job though I know kids who do that but again, these likely are not the kids in ECs or in the demanding classes. But most kids here work at least a little and some do a lot. </p>
<p>I did not have as heavy an EC load when I grew up as my kids do now, but I was a very good student in the toughest classes. I actually did work in my senior year of high school. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>I actually just noticed an interesting phenomenon this winter break. All my daughter's friends had gotten jobs during their senior year in hs (primarily retail). All worked steadily during the summer and then all were able to easily slide right into their old jobs and pick up hours over the xmas break. It was perfect for them: extra $$ during a down time. Still left plenty of time for the late night get-togethers and poker games. I also know a few kids who had never worked during hs. Those kids are now behind in getting jobs because they hadn't established a relationship with an employer earlier. And they are worried about being able to find work this summer whereas I think most of the other ones know they'll probably be able to go back to their previous jobs.</p>
<p>I did not allow my daughter to work during marching band season (a 6 day a week EC). After that she had to - and she wanted to - get a job. The key is to find an employer that's flexible most of the time. There were times she had to go to work when there was a test or paper due and she wound up not getting a lot of sleep those nights. But it also taught her time management skills (procrastination is one of her strongest skills!). For the most part she was able to manage it all.</p>
<p>I don't think the amount of hours worked is as important as just working somewhere. It provides invaluable lessons about things like time management skills, managing $$, responsibility, communication skills, etc. I think there are usually local employers - and the kids know who they are - who are sensitive to high schoolers need for flexibility and work with them regarding hours and scheduling.</p>
<p>Our son has not worked for pay, but he has held an internship for a year in which he did office work for our state assemblywoman as community service (she was recently termed out, so the intership is now over). And he is lining up another volunteer internship with a local county supervisor. My H and I think that these jobs will pay off for him in the long run, since he plans to go into government (and study it in college). Between those "jobs" and his high school and college classes and a few intense EC commitments this year, I can't imagine him doing well if he also had a work commitment. We will definitely expect him to get a paying job for the summer before he leaves for college. (He wanted to get a job last spring and actually would have been hired by a dept. store in town after an interview, but he was going to be out of town for a month of the summer and they didn't want to train him and then have him be gone.) My H and I have felt very similar to you Backhandgrip... the kid needs to start earning his way. But it's also possible that his good grades, awards and EC leadership will translate into significant scholarship money... so time will tell if he does in fact earn his way! (keeping fingers crossed!)</p>
<p>Momof2inCA...I agree that the volunteer jobs and internships are very valuable and I would place a lot of those as a priority over the other jobs. My D who worked senior year on Saturday nights serving dinners for pay and taught tap dance for pay, also was an assistant teacher two times per week in her old elem school (she truly loved doing it) and that was strictly volunteer or comm. service and also coached youth soccer as a volunteer (loved that too) though was paid when she was a ref for youth soccer games. She also did a two week internship with an architect so she could explore that field further as she was/is contemplating majoring in that area in college and this was more important at the time than a paying job. However, they did pay her a stipend, even though she would have done it for free for the experience. </p>
<p>I recall when my younger D was paid money for some professional performances and that sort of blew us away because she would have done it for free for the wonderful experience, particularly as she is going into this field in college and beyond. I can recall a couple times when she was paid for one single performance what it took my other child 200 hours to earn at a decent paying summer job! But we let her keep 10% and made her sock away the rest until she went to college and it is a good thing to have for college now that she has not been able to earn that much during high school other than babysitting money. </p>
<p>I think the main thing is to learn some values in working (responsibility, etc.) and even if it is community service, you learn it the same. And then some jobs, like your son's or my D's architecture internship or my other D's professional stage work are pertinent to further educational and career objectives, and are of value whether paid or not. The second value in working is earning money of course but that is secondary to the first value, I think.</p>
<p>I think some kids can manage a full load of AP classes, demanding EC involvements, and a part-time job if they have really good time management skills, a job that offers some flexibility in scheduling, and no intense desire for a busy social life. Otherwise, I don't see how it could happen! My middle d, currently a senior, has worked for the past year and a half at a local movie theater. I was NOT happy when she told me she wanted to do this and strongly advised her not to (which certainly sealed the deal as far as she was concerned). She works 2 7-hour shifts on weekends during the school year and 25 or 30 hours during school vacations (almost 70 hours during our recent 10-day Christmas break).</p>
<p>She's continuing to do well with a rigorous academic schedule. She usually dances 3 hours each night, though she'll skip class when she's got a paper due or a big test the next day, and had very spotty attendance while she was working on her apps. She's also a musician and an officer in 2 school clubs, so she's never looking for something to do. She'd be the first to tell you that her social life is a joke, but it's been her choice to set her life up this way and having a minimum wage job has taught her a lot about the way the general public is willing to treat people with minimum wage jobs.</p>
<p>She's a little bit OCD with time management issues, which helps. It's not unusual for her to get up early Saturday morning to do an assignment that's due the following Thursday. I'd say about half of her friends who are on the all-AP track have part-time jobs.</p>
<p>Students who work and manage to do well in school while taking a tough courseload are able to do it by:
1. Having their job be their primary EC.<br>
2. Being supremely well organized
3. Not taking the most rigorous academic schedule. </p>
<p>Colleges will review holding a job as a major EC demonstrating maturity, responsibility and possibly leadership (such as if a person is a crew leader, assistant manager or has similar duties). </p>
<p>Colleges are particularly impressed when students either are working to help support their families or to save for college or when students are working in a field that is similar to the one that they wish to eventually enter. This is the kind of info that students can highlight through their essays. Depending on their reasons for doing it and how the students describe their job on their college apps, working at McDonalds could impress colleges more than would a student's being a student council officer.</p>