<p>That certainly is a huge judgement to make cgm.</p>
<p>The info. in the Boston Globe article is not a "new" issue to college admissions offices and the application evaluation.</p>
<p>The following excerpt is from the article,"Time out or Burnout for the Next Generation," which was written in 2000, and updated in 2006 by William Fitzsimmons and Marilyn Lewis of the Harvard College Admissions office, along with Charles Ducey of the Harvard School of Ed. It has been referenced numerous times on CC.</p>
<p>This excerpt is one of 3 suggestions for the high school years, recommended by students and reinforced by the authors, to reduce stress and prevent burnout. It reinforces many of the posts made on this thread:</p>
<p>"Bring summer back. Summer need not be totally consumed by highly structured programs, such as summer schools, travel programs, or athletic camps. While such activities can be wonderful in many ways, they can also add to stress by assembling "super peers" who set nearly impossible standards. Activities in which one can develop at one's own pace can be much more pleasant and helpful. An old-fashioned summer job that provides a contrast to the school year or allows students to meet others of differing backgrounds, ages, and life experiences is often invaluable in providing psychological downtime and a window on future possibilities. Students need ample free time to reflect, to recreate (i.e. to "re-create" themselves without the driving pressure to achieve as an influence), and to gather strength for the school year ahead."</p>
<p>First of all, I can't top Corranged's post #13 on the first page -- so I'll just say, "what Corranged said".....</p>
<p>To add to that:</p>
<p>Paid employment vs. volunteer work vs. enriching travel is not mutually exclusive. When my son was in high school he went off one summer to do volunteer work for a month in Thailand, then came home and got a job at the local pizzeria. (And no, he didn't have a car -- he walked to & from work and sometimes borrowed my car or got a ride from me. The deal was that he didn't have an allowance either - he was working for his own benefit, not to buy a luxury item.). My son has supported himself entirely since age 20, and has combined his interest in community service with his interest in being able to pay his own rent by working mostly for nonprofits -- sometimes he volunteers, sometimes he gets paid, sometimes its a little bit of both. He "graduated" from his year with Americorps this past week, then called me to say that he was hoping to find some sort of job for the next 6 weeks before he starts an internship in the fall -- he's hoping for pay, but is willing to volunteer if the pay doesn't come through. </p>
<p>Last year, my daughter learned at the end of May that her dance class had been invited to perform in China in July. About 2 days later she informed me that she had found a summer job with a major downtown retailer. I asked, "what about your trip?" She said she had already cleared that with the employer, letting them know about the planned travel -- but she intended to work as much as possible before and after. This summer, my daughter has an internship with a nonprofit agency that can't pay her -- she worked extra hours during her spring semester to earn enough to enable her to take a volunteer position over the summer, but also applied for grant money -- she got the grant she applied for so she'll be returning to school in the fall with a healthy bank balance. My d. is already talking about doing the same thing next year -- working extra hours during the school year so that she can fund volunteer work over the summer. (Getting a grant this year was nice, but obviously not something that can be counted on for the future).</p>
<p>As a single parent, I simply am not in a position to fund my kids' personal lives through their 20's -- I've got to borrow money as it is to pay for tuition -- I simply can't be sending them a monthly check on top of it. But I also feel that they are both have an advantage when it comes to getting work simply by virtue of having plenty of experience on their resumes. </p>
<p>Volunteer work is valuable and important, but it is not the same as paid work. For one thing, the screening process to get hired is tougher when a pay check is involved. The summer my d. was 17 she was unable to find a job -- she spent every day looking and filled out at least 45 different job applications -- but she didn't get a call back or get hired until October of her senior year. But since that time she has been far more successful in getting jobs -- part of the <em>experience</em> gained over time is the knowledge of how to get the job in the first place. The workplace environment tends to be somewhat different when a paycheck is involved as well; employers are more demanding and critical than people supervising volunteers, but paid employees also will be entrusted with greater responsibility over time because employers view them as more reliable simply because they are on the payroll. So while the work may start out as menial, the opportunities for growth and promotion are greater.</p>
<p>I can see why college ad coms would have high regard for a student with a history of continuous employment at a "real" job. A solid work history says something about the student's maturity and ability to assume responsibility.</p>
<p>Yeah...I volunteer in the summer because I've done so for nearly all of high school, and it's not something you can let go of for something else that takes quite some dedication!</p>
<p>A lot of jobs my kids have had....they have loved the experience so much that they would have done it for free just for the experience, though they do love earning money and need to. I can think of some things one of my kids is doing even now that she is thrilled to be doing for the opportunity alone. The pay is the icing on the cake. She does need to earn money. But the experience itself is worthwhile for its own sake. </p>
<p>Also, the more jobs a student has had, it builds an employment resume. You gotta start somewhere! ECs only go so far on a resume after you apply for college. But when applying for other jobs or even internships, it is nice to show some sort of work experience where you have been given responsibilities, etc.</p>
<p>When my Ds got their internships, the places had no internships, they went in cold, with resume in hand, and talked the places into creating internships for them- now both places have created true internship positions, etc.</p>
<p>I am so frustrated that people feel that you don't have responsibilty and growth just because you aren't paid,</p>
<p>My Ds have friends who "work" but are no more mature and are in fact much more clueless about the "real world" than either of my daughters, so the presumption that having a job makes you a better applicant is just not true, it is the same for athletics</p>
<p>my D didn't play HS sports because they were cut, and once that happens, it is almost impossible to get into the program, so after freshman year, too bad, does that mean they don't have the team skills and dedication that is assumed athletes do?</p>
<p>not at all</p>
<p>just showing up and folding clothes all day with other teens does not necessarlly mean that person is a team player and such</p>
<p>my Ds summer program with JSA two years ago will most likely lead to a job</p>
<p>my Ds volunteering with the magazine will most likely lead to a job- the connections she has made and the unusualness of a HS working in a real publishing house will be more valuable than any parttime restaurant job ever would have</p>
<p>my son's fellow life guards attended Colgate, Amherst, Penn, and UVa and Rensselaer(him). The Uva grad is now in med school.</p>
<p>Very sweet life guard crew.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am so frustrated that people feel that you don't have responsibilty and growth just because you aren't paid
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hmm, I didn't get that impression from posts on this thread. Speaking for myself, I don't feel this way. I think both paid and unpaid jobs can involve responsibility and growth. I think most people would agree. I think that stating that a paid job, even menial ones, involve learning responsibility, doesn't then imply that unpaid work does not. It is just a comment about holding a job.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, my parents didnt have- or otherwise were not going to pay for things more than the absolute basics.
If I wanted a ski jacket or a wool coat I had to find the money to buy it-
While babysitting provided enough money to fund school dances and rollerskating excursions, a coat or semi expensive shoes was the motivation to get a real job- as soon as I could.
When I was 16, I started working in the kitchen of a nursing home- very hard work, mindless, and since I didn't graduate from high school, those were the kind of jobs I had for a few years- the skills learned in one, didn't really get me to a higher level for another.
Well I take that back- summer jobs for low income youth were subsidized, and after my father died when I was 17, I qualified as low income and got a job as the "secretary" for the caretaker of a public beach.
hangout at the beach all day and get paid ( oh wait this is about learning perserverance and the value of a dollar)</p>
<p>I don't think badly of kids who work during high school, why would I?
But I think that for myself, it was very draining, and time consuming & instead of making me feel that education was important so that I wasn't stuck in jobs like that forever, it made me feel like " why would I think that I was any better" than my coworkers. It didn't expand my viewpoint to other possiblities.
So I really didn't want that for my kids. Instead of working picking berries when they were 13 like I did, for school clothes, I made sure that as soon as they were old enough, they got to participate in classes or camps that stimulated their interests and let them try new things.
Not all summer certainly and soon as they were old enough ( 12 for the older- 14 for younger) they began regular volunteering at the zoo.
The plus with volunteering is- for the organization, teens can work longer hours than if you paid them, and for the teens they can acheive more responsibilty with a greater variety of duties than if they were paid.
It was still pretty hard work- working year round at the pony barn isn't for the weak or squeamish.
Yes ponies are cute, but horse poo is heavy and cleaning foreskin adhesions :p
But they would have * paid* for those experiences-
and while D has friends who work during high school, ( mostly during vacations and breaks) I notice that her friends don't have cars usually and are saving for college- not paying for gas and concert tickets like me and my friends.
Any activity you can learn something from- but I hope we aren't making low paying menial work sound more noble than it is.
The people who perform those jobs, aren't any better or worse than anyone else. However- the jobs themselves can be pretty soul killing and its pretty sad to see teenagers be depressed by their job- they have their whole life to do that!</p>
<p>I didn't say that volunteers don't have any responsibility and growth.. I said that paid employees have opportunities for more responsibility. There are legal & ethical reasons that in the workplace some responsibilities cannot be entrusted to volunteers. </p>
<p>I also learned something a long time ago, back in the days that I had volunteer & internship positions -- it wasn't always the best path toward a job. In work environments, even longstanding volunteers are often passed over for job positions that come up. I think sometimes there is a sense that the person is willing to work for free, so why waste a valuable paid position on that individual. I'm not saying that it's right, but it certainly seems to be common, at least in my experience. One of the lessons learned in paid employment is not only how to do various tasks, but how to place value on one's own labor and how and when to ask for more money. </p>
<p>I think that statements about "showing up and folding clothes" really demonstrate a lack of understanding of the range and types of employment that many teenagers and young adults hold -- as well as the range of responsibilities that go along with even entry-level employment. That actually is, in my opinion, a rather demeaning statement about kids who work for pay. I can assure you, when you go to a department store, the employees there do a lot more than fold clothes.</p>
<p>cgm, you perceive a negative tone in the article and it bothers you. I'm not going to argue about the article again, because I admit it could be perceived as negative by some and I respect that. But none of comments made in the article even come close to the demeaning and insulting statements you've made about teens (TEENS, kids, young adults barely getting started in life!) who work.
Do you realize you're doing what you object to the most?</p>
<p>I also am reading some inferences that some low paying jobs such as in the service sector are being belittled as meaningless work. While such work may not lead directly to career advancement, I think there is a great deal to be said for the experience. For starters, to get a job, often a young person needs a reference from a previous employer. I know my daughter used references from her job as a dinner server to get two other paying jobs. She no longer has to rely on that recommendation but when starting out, such a recommendation was required for other summer jobs she obtained. </p>
<p>The job my D had in junior and senior years of high school (all money earned was saved and she has a tidy sum for extra college spending money or to use for funding various other college summer experiences), was as a dinner server at a very small country inn where we live, in a resort area. There are no other employees at this inn. The couple who own it, run it and do all the work. The husband is the chef at dinner time and the wife serves the patrons. During busy tourist times, the wife needed help serving all the dinner guests. It was very important to her as to who they hired. Their entire business rests on hospitality to the guests so that they will return again. The young person they hired had to not only be good at the tasks and responsible, but also personable to the guests as part of that was the dining experience in this setting. Whomever they hired was basically representing their business. To be honest, my D was very good at this aspect of the job, let alone the responsibilities. I know the owners were very happy with her and quite sad when she left for college. While her job may sound menial, it was important to the running of that business. Her job didn't relate to her future career directly but the experience gave her experience on a work resume as she got other early jobs. As well, I am sure she learned aspects of being relied upon in a work setting and dealing with "clients". I'm glad she had the experience. Such work is not beneathe my child. The owners themselves wait on customers and they have had successful careers in the publishing world in NYC. A lot of people where I live work in the service sector and their jobs are important to the businesses that rely on tourists. My child didn't need a college degree to get that job. But everyone starts somewhere. In fact, the experience at that job enabled her to get job offers overseas in the same field. Those jobs wanted her to have experience. So, it helped her resume at the time. I don't expect her to wait tables after she graduates college, but I am glad she had some early jobs. When I was a senior in high school, I worked at a shoe store. Once in college, I "advanced" to other jobs. </p>
<p>I also don't see this as an either/or proposition. My children, as well as myself, also attended summer camps and programs. They have gotten to do enrichment programs, travel, volunteer work and paying jobs. Each experience has been of value for different reasons. The paid jobs were never less valued.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I said that paid employees have opportunities for more responsibility
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Baloney. That's a blindly held assumption for upper middle class Americans of a certain age. </p>
<p>Where is the responsibility in a DQ job? Getting the ice cream just right? How about a movie usher? Making sure the patrons don't put their feet on the seats? Give me a break.</p>
<p>I understand why you think these menial jobs add value--but as someone who did those jobs to death as a youngster, I am convinced that the vast majority of teen jobs not only do not add value, the vast majority of those jobs are unhealthy for the non-material soul. The real result of most of those jobs is that teens are turned into hyped-up materialists and consumers. With all that money they start thinking about what they can BUY at a too early age. Great for the economy but bad for other aspects of character--IMO. The 'menial work is good for teens' idea is a brilliant Madison Avenue concept. Don't think they aren't working it, baby. Spend! Spend! Spend!</p>
<p>My S1 did a few weeks of menial work to earn pocket money. It only takes a few weeks on the docks to understand that scene. S1's first real job was as a paid staffer on Capital Hill at age 20. His work ethic was good enough for them to hire him to the paid position after a summer internship. His bosses loved him. He was fine.</p>
<p>S2 hasn't had a paid job yet--but a VC offered him thousands to launch his product a few weeks after his 18th birthday. His lack of paid work didn't hurt his college apps one bit.</p>
<p>Send your children to work if you want to but don't presume that it is a 'must-do' for humility, work ethic--or any of the other morality you ascribed to it. That is nonsense.</p>
<p>If menial jobs really delivered higher work ethics and better humility then the nation's working poor would be the creme of humanity. My grandparent's generation--who played tennis in the summers-- would have been the bane of humanity. I would be the model of humility.</p>
<p>Pshaw.</p>
<p>We are SO coming from opposite ends of the spectrum. My grandparents did not play tennis in the summer. My "papa" was a citrus grower (some call them citrus barons), a good ole boy from NC who started by working on a grove caretaking crew (jobs that go to migrant labor nowadays), and worked up to starting his own caretaking business, to slowly buying land until he owned thousands of acres of groves in central Florida. Nope...no tennis there, although he ended up buying my "mama" a mansion in Winter Park right up the street from Rollins, where there most certainly was a lot of tennis playing going on. (By that time they were a little old for tennis)</p>
<p>My daddy who became a dentist spent his summers as a delivery boy, biking all over downtown Orlando (back when you wouldn't recognize the Mouse House) from one dental office/lab to the next. One of the dentists he worked for was instrumental in getting him an interview at Emory dental school, where he ended up studying (I believe Emory no longer has a dental school).</p>
<p>I'm only posting this information because it's the second time I've heard that yesterday's generation spent their summers playing tennis, which is so not true in our family's case!</p>
<p>I think that these sorts of paid work have value but they certainly are NOT a necessary experience and certainly are not necessary to get into college. </p>
<p>One of my kids....every paid job of hers has been related to her career field. So, other than babysitting, she hasn't done any of the types of "menial" jobs being described. </p>
<p>However, either way, I think all work experiences my kids have done (whether career related or more menial) have been valuable for one reason or another. None were "must have" experiences.</p>
<p>I also don't think my children's early jobs influenced them to be materialists and consumers. Rather, by saving all the money they earned, they were able to have a nice "nest egg" for four years of college spending money and one of my kids also funded both travel and a summer program at Harvard during college summers with her own earnings. One of my kids goes to college in NYC which is an expensive place to be and in order to take full advantage of experiencing the city, I am glad she earned a lot of money growing up to be able to supplement the allowance we give her during college. Some of the money she earned was when she was only 11 years old. </p>
<p>I don't think menial jobs deliver higher work ethics. I think any jobs kids hold, whether related to their careers or simply entry level work experiences, hold some value. I also think there are kids who earn money because they NEED it. I know plenty of kids who earn summer money to fund their college books or tuition and things like gas. My kids do not have to do that but I know LOTS where I live who do. I think it is a narrow view to think that young people only earn money to buy more material things. Please tell that to the kids who check me out at the grocery each week who have told me they are waiting to save up money so they may attend college.</p>
<p>I see working as a double-edged sword:</p>
<p>Because paid employment differs in important respects from other types of activities, it can teach a young person lessons that might not be learned in other settings -- things about responsibility and reliability (such as the importance of showing up on time), about working well with others from a wide variety of backgrounds, about the importance of attributes other than "brains" to success, and about what it's like to function in an environment where your own needs and preferences are mostly irrelevant. It also provides money that some kids may want or need.</p>
<p>On the other hand, working can draw a young person's attention away from education, and (sometimes) it can draw the young person into a social group that does not value education. The money the kid earns can also be a drawback if it is spent in unwise ways.</p>
<p>My son, now a rising senior in college, disliked conventional high school extracurricular activities, and had dropped out of all of them by the midpoint of his freshman year. At that point, though, he found a job -- as a library page (you can get hired at 14). He worked there for two years and then moved on to a more varied and responsible job in a party supply store, where he stayed for a year and a half (until a week before he left for college). I think he learned a lot from these experiences, and (especially considering his lack of extracurriculars), the jobs probably were an asset to his college applications (he got into his first choice school). He also earned money that enabled him to buy video and computer games and various types of computer software and hardware -- things of great interest to him that his father and I weren't willing to pay for.</p>
<p>So it was mostly a good experience. BUT...we had to be careful that it didn't interfere with homework. At the library, where kids worked 2- or 3-hour shifts, this was not a problem. But at the party store, part-time employees were expected to work 6- to 8-hour shifts. This would mean 3 pm to 9 pm on a school night, leaving no time for homework. My husband and I told our son that this was unacceptable -- we said that he could work at the party store during the school year only if his shifts were limited to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Surprisingly, his boss agreed to this. During his senior year in high school, S usually worked 6 hours on Friday and 8 hours on one of the two weekend days. There were no further problems. (I should also add that the store manager often preached to the kids who worked there that they should go to college and stay there and get their degrees. He said that he was working as a retail store manager only because he did not stick with college, and that he would rather have had the wider variety of career opportunities open to college graduates. This guy was a rare prize!)</p>
<p>My daughter, who was in an IB program, was warned before the program even started that IB kids have difficulty working during high school. The demands of the program plus ECs tend to keep them very busy during the school year, and they often find it necessary to do IB-related things in the summers as well (or to use the summers to get other necessities -- such as driver ed, wisdom tooth surgery, and college visits -- out of the way, since there is little time for such things during the jam-packed IB school year). </p>
<p>At the time my daughter applied for college, she had never earned a dollar in her life. During high school, she spent a summer and a half taking summer school courses (to get three routine required-for-graduation courses out of the way to give herself space in her schedule for academic and music electives during the school year), did her driver ed, took an SAT course, worked twice (unpaid volunteer work) as a counselor-in-training at a day camp (once for the community service hours required for graduation, the second time for CAS hours required for the IB diploma), worked as a volunteer intern (unpaid) at a local museum (again for CAS hours), did her college visits, wrote her IB Extended Essay, and (as with so many kids), got her wisdom teeth out. There was just no time for work in there. Her lack of paid employment experience didn't seem to hurt her college applications. Like her brother, she got into her first choice school.</p>
<p>This summer, however -- the summer between high school and college -- D is working as a cashier in a craft store. She doesn't like it much, but nothing better was available. I think that this experience, though brief, is good for her. She is learning to function in an environment so foreign to her that she might as well be on another planet, and she is meeting people of types whom she would never have encountered in the academic cocoons in which she spends most of her time. She will also be able to get a nice recommendation from the store manager, who is very pleased with her work. But I am glad that the experience will be a brief one because the other people working in the store are people who place little or no value on education. Many are people who went no further than a high school diploma. Some are high school dropouts. Some have no concept of fun beyond drinking and drugs. Several are trapped in dead-end jobs because they had children while still in their teens. Because my daughter is only working there for 10 weeks, she has made no attempt to make friends with her coworkers. She is pleasant, but she has not initiated any outside-of-work social activities with any of them. But if she stayed longer, she might make friends and pick up some unfortunate attitudes along with those friendships.</p>
<p>My kids, in my opinion, have not been hurt by working, but some kids are.</p>
<p>A friend of my son's, who had worked part-time in a supermarket during high school, went away to college and hated it. He decided to come home and earn the first half of his college credits at our local community college, with the intent of transferring to a different four-year college for his last two years. Once enrolled in the community college, he went back to working part-time at the supermarket. A couple of years have gone by now. I talk to him sometimes at the supermarket, and I hear less and less about college; I'm not even sure if he is enrolled in the community college anymore. At the supermarket, though, he has been promoted several times and is now a supervisor. I think he is working full-time. Obviously (as indicated by his rapid promotions), he is an excellent employee. He's earning good money -- or so it seems to a young person. But a few years down the line, he's going to find that his opportunities for further promotion are limited because he has no college degree. And by that time, getting a degree will probably be difficult because he may have assumed some adult obligations (wife, kids, mortgage) that he would not have had at 18. Would this young man have been more motivated to earn a college degree promptly if he had not had the temptation of the seemingly good (but actually quite limiting) supermarket job? I think so.</p>
<p>A briefer example: I also know a girl who has worked for several years at the classic kids' summer job -- she is a lifeguard. Working at the same pool for several summers, she had become friends with the other lifeguards -- a group devoted to drinking and partying. This has led her to become involved in risky activities that she might otherwise have avoided. And because lifeguards earn pretty good money, she has plenty of money with which to indulge in such activities. Would this young woman have been more likely to avoid illegal and dangerous activities if she had not been a lifeguard? I think so.</p>
<p>And one more example (if you can stand it): Working can change your kid's life forever. Literally. I am the example here. I met my husband at a summer job; I was in high school and he was in college, and we both worked summers at a swimming pool supply store. If not for that job, our lives might have gone in entirely different directions.</p>
<p>Cheers:</p>
<p>You are over-generalizing. There are many reasons why high school kids hold jobs. In our school, some kids hold jobs throughout the school year and summer because they and their family need the money, not because they want an Ipod or a car. In other cases, they do use their earnings for spending money, and they spend in ways that may not be the most frugal (eg. expensive shoes or jackets). </p>
<p>As so often is the case with newspaper articles, tone is a problem. I do not think that adcoms are undervaluing unpaid internships or extended travel. They are reacting instead to a trend that has been noted time and again on CC--nothing new here!--toward thinking up experiences that will enhance applicants' resumes rather than experiences that will enhance the student's knowledge, cultural sensitivity,self-confidence, engagement in community service, etc... The kind of experiences your kids have had are miles from those that are cooked up by some high priced college counselors and should not be confused with them. </p>
<p>I agree with you that in the past, students who did not need the money tended to laze the summer away. This article reflects the fairly recent emphasis on ECs as a distinguishing element in applications. This is due to the rise in absolute terms in the number of qualified applicants. It is also fairly limited to top private universities and LACs as state institutions tend to be somewhat more numbers-driven and put less emphasis on "what applicants will bring to the community" and also attract on average less affluent students whose parents cannot afford to spend $10k for their offspring to travel to Thailand or Tibet.</p>
<p>So, as another poster noted, as these top private institutions seek to attract lower income students, they want to reassure those lower income students that working at unglamorous jobs is a worthwhile undertaking. </p>
<p>Some kids posting on CC lament that they do not have ECs because they have to work or they have to help mind their younger siblings. They have to be reminded that their jobs, whether baby-sitting or helping out in their parents' restaurants-- are very valuable ECs. The skills that are learned have to do with being reliable, showing up on time, doing one's part as a member of a team (something that many of my S's classmates did not learn when doing team projects!).</p>
<p>Still, as Mini keeps reminding us, the number of low SES students who will be admitted to top schools will remain fairly small. So adcoms are unlikely to turn away applicants who spent their summers doing an internship, attending an academic program, or traveling to foreign places.</p>
<p>My S has held a job with the same large grocery store chain for almost 4 years. He started at 16 as a bagger, then moved on the cashier, by the time he was a senior, he was a customer service clerk....no responsibility you say?<br>
As a CS clerk (the youngest one in the store and only high sch. student doing it I might add), his "Non-responsibilities" included supervising the front end of the store on 2nd shift (3-10 p.m.after finishing a day at sch) which included adult cashiers, cashing out all the registers at the end of his shift and then tallying all the tapes to make sure they balanced...then unlocking the safe (yes, he was trusted with the combination) and depositing the money. </p>
<p>On weekends, he got up at 5:30 to open the store (yes, he had the key to the grocery store) at 6:00. If he didn't show, the store wouldn't open on time. He worked behind the CS desk all day fielding complaints, helping out the cashiers/baggers, filling in other depts. if someone didn't show up for work. He showed up for work at 7a.m. the day after his senior prom because it was his reponsibilty. </p>
<p>He worked 25-30 hours during the sch. year and full-time in the summers. He has never missed a day of work that he was scheduled for. He is a Dean's List student at his college and still working for the same company. </p>
<p>Yes, he has a car.....a luxurious 1989 Ford with 189,000 miles on it, that he paid for.</p>
<p>No one can tell me my kid has no responsibility. He has done an adult's job for 3 years and gained worlds of mangement experience which will serve him well in 2 years when he is commisioned as an officer in the US Navy. </p>
<p>Voluntering is great and I have nothing bad to say about kids who do it but the ones who work to earn money they need are not all doing dead end, meanigless, no responsibiltiy jobs.</p>
<p>My sons worked in a movie theater, and they don't have the kids just "usher". The employees rotate jobs, so that they learn concessions, ticketing, yes ushering (although ushering mostly involves preparing the theater for the next movie and making sure kids don't sneak in places they shouldn't), and sometimes operating the video equipment. The latter is pretty interesting, because there is just ONE room up top for all 20 theaters, and a guy sits up there operating those 20 monitors. I don't know why I still had this picture in my mind of the old time film projector with some guy feeding the reel and smoking a cigarette....(what was that old Italian movie??)</p>
<p>Anyway, it was a pretty good job from a "skills" standpoint- quite varied (food prep and service, money handling, people handling, video operations).</p>
<p>Like soozie said about retail not just involving folding a bunch of clothes...people tend to minimize the actual skills/responsibility involved in some of these jobs. They may not sound too difficult to us, but for a 16/17 year old, it does take a lot of maturity and responsibility.</p>
<p>Think about it next time you go to one of these mega-theaters...everything from money to food to the actual movie running correctly and on time is in the hands of 16-18 year olds.</p>
<p>Also there are the jobs working with children. My kids have had those kind of jobs too for pay. What could involve any more responsibility than being in charge or others' children? I'm not just talking of babysitting, though both my kids also did that in high school. </p>
<p>One of my kids worked two summers in a day program for kids, a camp of sorts....tennis and swimming (including kids who could not swim). She also taught in an overnight English language immersion program for kids in France. She also was a tap dance teacher for youth and a soccer coach for youth. Another one of my kids has directed her own summer program for kids that she created. She is totally in charge of running the program and doesn't work for anyone. Parents are paying her a lot to direct and teach the program. A lot of responsibility goes with it. </p>
<p>So, jobs working with children may not be what they do for their careers but these jobs have involved a great deal of responsibility that parents have entrusted in them and are paying good money for them to provide.</p>
<p>BTW, Marite, I agree with all the points you made in your post.</p>