MAKING WORK FUN: Join Thousands of Students Making Real Money Doing Fun Chores You’ve probably heard the old joke: “In college you can do only three things: study, sleep, and party … but you can do only two of those three in any given semester. ” Change party for hang out with friends (just in case any parents are reading this) and it can also be said of high school. That all sounds great, but it forgets one thing you must add to that list, one thing you must consider, whether you want to or not: getting a job! After all, beer and designer clothes textbooks and food don’t come cheap.
A Brief History of Students Finding Jobs Years ago, you usually found a job through your parents or their contacts. They knew a man who knew a man who knew a shop owner who needed someone to stock shelves, or a barber who needed someone to sweep his floors, or—for the unlucky–a farmer who needed someone to slop out his pigpens. A few motivated folks may even have asked around for themselves, but often you were stuck with the job parents found for you. Then people began taking more responsibility for finding their own jobs through the likes of classified ads.
You still may not have find a job that thrilled you, but the act of finding your own job, having a little money in your pocket, not relying on your parents, proved you were ready to face the big bad world … and it was exhilarating! Now, we’re in the Age of the Internet. Information at your fingertips. You don’t have to rely on parents, or newspapers, or even television to find a job. These days, if you play your cards right, you can feel that exhilaration for yourself by not only finding a job but finding a job doing what you want to do. But Why Would I Want a Job?
Whether it is a seasonal job or a part-time job year round, there are plenty of reasons students want jobs: • You might have to supplement the family income • You need to pay for room/board/living expenses • You want a car • You’re trying to reduce the amount you need to borrow in student loans • You want to buy the new album by Taylor Swift, or Drake, or Fetty Wap, or Luciano Pavarotti (Hey, have you never heard of non-traditional students? ) Finding a job to bring in some cash is a rite of passage for most students. Even folks who are now rich and famous had to do it.
Sandra Bullock was a bartender. Dwayne Wade, Gwen Stefani, Queen Latifah, and Ne-Yo all had jobs in restaurants (KFC, Dairy Queen, Burger King, and McDonald’s respectively). Kanye West worked in the GAP. Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spiderman, mowed lawns and pruned hedges. Gene Simmons of KISS, Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, and Morgan Freeman of… well, every movie made in the last 30 years, all delivered newspapers. Jim Carrey and Jon Bon Jovi both spent time as janitors. Jennifer Aniston and (reportedly) Miley Cyrus cleaned toilets.
And Cindy Crawford, at one time the world’s most famous supermodel, made some extra cash shucking corn at the county fair. Okay Then, I Need a Job but What Are the Pros and Cons? Reasons against students taking on extra work: These are useful if you’re trying to persuade you parents that you don’t need a job, they just have to raise your allowance, but be warned: they are usually ineffective! • Some people think that school, high school or college Is a full time job. Add the time of actually attending class to the time needed for homework and studying (depending on how diligent you are), you can easily exceed 40 hours per week.
Adding anything else to that schedule can reduce the amount of time available for homework/studying. Therefore, performance in school, and grades, can be adversely affected. You have to give up extracurricular activities and fun time. • You don’t get to see family and friends as much. • The stress of going to school and working can decrease sleep, interfere with diet, and lead to illnesses such as depression. Reasons for students taking on a job include: Studies show that, as long as the job doesn’t exceed 15-20 hours per week most students manage just fine with no detrimental effects to health or school performance.
On the contrary, as long as you aren’t overdoing the work, classroom performance often goes up. • Working increases your sense of responsibility and confidence. • Interacting with people outside your immediate circle of family and friends improves social skills. • You develop time-management, goal-setting, and prioritizing skills. • It reduces debt and provides spending money. • It improves employment opportunities when you leave school. Having a job and some money in your pocket and reducing your reliance on others brings with it a SENSE OF FREEDOM that few other things give you.
What Type of Job Can I Find? You’re obviously not going to find a job as a lawyer just because you once talked yourself out of a speeding ticket, or out of a grounding because of that B in English, or out of a severe beating from the school bully, but other than because of legal restrictions you can pretty much find anything. However, the traditional jobs such as those listed before, or pizza delivery remain the most common. The Fatal Flaw? You Are Someone Else’s Employee. It really doesn’t matter how flexible they agreed to be when they hired you, you are now an employee.
As far as the boss is concerned an employee’s first concern must be the business. Got a mid-term rest tomorrow? Fine … as long as your shift at the restaurant is covered. But if someone calls out sick and there is no-one else to cover, your employer is going to expect you to be there. Refuse and you might discover you suddenly have a lot more free time. That may be fine for some, but you want more! You want freedom to choose when and where you work. You want to choose the type of work. You want to set your own rates. And most of all, you want to have fun while working
How Can I Find a Job That I Want? This brings us to the Internet, repository of all knowledge and wisdom. As mentioned before, the Internet is a great way of finding jobs. Enter your location into the search bar and see what comes up. Wonderful, but there still seems to be a lot of adverts for work in restaurants and retail stores and customer service, jobs that tie you down to an employer. So what next? Aha, you think. If you want a car ride where and where you want it, you have an app on your smartphone for Uber. You’re hungry?
You have an app on your phone for GrubHub, to deliver the type of food you want to the place where you want it, at the time you want it, even if that restaurant doesn’t deliver. Surely someone’s created an app to find the type of job that you want, something where you’re working for yourself? Another epiphany! You type in mobile apps for finding jobs. “Hmm: Indeed. com; Careerbuilder. com; Monster. com. Oh well, let’s give them a try. ” Enter location. And search … and slap yourself in the head as you review the list of results. Restaurants! Shops! Employers! You don’t want to work for someone else.
You want to work for yourself. You want to set your own schedule. You want to set your own rate. If you’re ill want to be able to say, “I’m not going to work today. ” The most entrepreneurial students these days have discovered a secret that’s been hiding in plain sight for years: to meet all of the needs you’ve listed you need to be your own boss The best way of being your own boss is by doing the chores that others don’t have time to do: mowing lawns, shoveling snow, cleaning pools or washing cars. It gives you variety. It gives you flexibility. It gives you fun.
A mobile app that can help you with this is Hocal, and it is now available in the Apple iTunes App store (with an Android version coming soon), and the link can be found at www. HocalApp. com Users post tasks and wait for the best offers. Helpers, you, offer help. You see a chore that looks like fun; You bid on it, and the user decides whether to hire you or not. But you remain in control. You set when you’re available, where you will work if you don’t want to travel outside a certain area, and if a user tries to undercut your fee and if you feel a job is no longer worth your time, you can refuse it.
And you can change your settings and restrictions at any time. You have complete control. You are your own boss. You are your own business. Sounds familiar, eh? Everything you want in a job. Flexibility. Independence. Fun. What have you got to lose? Of course you could go back to taking your chance with a boss. He or she might be nice and kind and understanding. Or with your parent’s friends; those jobs in the shop or the barber’s, or slopping out pigpen s might still be available.