Not returning after junior year job - how to handle?

<p>My daughter is a senior this year and worked last year for a local after school program. She is not returning this year for a couple of reasons...one was that she was working with a special needs child and really did not like the way they were treating him in this program...she thought they were very harsh and it upset her. But also, she is very busy this year with a new extracurricular activity that meets almost every day after school and is tied to her future major. When they asked her about coming back, she told them that she only really had one day each week to work after school (she used to work three) and that wasn't a day that this child was coming, so it's not as if she actually said "no" but it worked out that way and I think she was relieved. She still works on Sundays at a second job (one she has had for a three years, at a Sunday school).</p>

<p>One question is about how to handle this on her activities resume. Will it look bad that she worked somewhere for a year and didn't return? Will they ask her about it during college interviews? (She doesn't want to say anything bad about the place of course, or sound like she wasn't committed.)</p>

<p>The second question is even more important...she wrote the short activity essay in her common app. about working with this special needs child (whom she loved) and what it was like, and she did mention that sometimes the teacher was not as inclusive as what my daughter would have liked to see. She likes the essay, but since she isn't working there anymore, she would really need to put it in the past tense, and then is it not appropriate to make that her essay since she doesn't work there anymore?</p>

<p>As an FYI, my daughter is applying to small schools and all request interviews at the schools themselves. They are not super elite schools...she has some learning disabilities and is applying to schools with support programs and with a major she is interested in.</p>

<p>Thank you for any advice.</p>

<p>Lots of kids don’t return to jobs for one reason or another. I seriously doubt that anyone will ask her about it…at all. But if they do, she can just say her schedule her senior year precluded her from continuing the number of hours she needed to obligate to that job.</p>

<p>My daughter had a job the summer after her soph year in high school…and jr year that she did not return to the summer before her senior year. She worked elsewhere. No one ever mentioned it at all.</p>

<p>I think you’re really overthinking this. Sometimes a job just isn’t a good fit, and people expect kids interests to change. I think the essay is fine, and I also doubt that anyone will ask her about it. </p>

<p>I worked my first job for three months before quitting and accepting another job (because the first one was shady as all hell and I was getting screwed out of paychecks) and I was only at the second job for three months (it was seasonal.) It was never even the tiniest bit of a hindrance, and I’m graduated now with a full time job.</p>