Objective: Find summer job to supplement unpaid internship that doesn't involve donating my eggs.
Skills: Exceedingly proficient in the use of the most cutting-edge office equipment (the Xerox machine, the automatic letter-stamper, the ever-temperamental envelope stuffer, the industrial-size paper shredder, the touch-tone telephone, the World Wide Web) and the most ancient (the scanner that dates back to Watergate, the rusty file cabinet, the Photostat, the eight-track, the astrolabe, the sundial).
Skills that Will Make You Say "WOW!": Can use most versions of Windows without a mouse. Can type quickly (made away with the "typing award" at middle school graduation) and, some say, quite loudly (conveniently allows boss to hear how hard I'm working).
There comes a time in the course of your academic career when you're persuaded by your parents, your peers, or, if you're one of those self-starters, yourself, to take on an unpaid internship for the summer. Lacking a money-growing tree, you'll need a paying job.
High school and college students use summer jobs to occupy themselves for three months. It's a simple way to "make the paper," as they say, and maybe make some new friends, before returning to school in the fall.
Maybe you used to have a steady job every summer - as a waitress, say, or a lifeguard or an ice-cream scooper - which was pleasurable in that mild way that three-month-long engagements are.
But if you're anything like me, you've had a ton of jobs. Stuff happens. The chopped-salad franchise shuts down, the management at the ice-cream shop changes, the temp agency fills your spot. Or you decide that you simply cannot - cannot - fold XL women's panties for another summer, despite the occasional Zen state that comes with the practice of Undergarment Origami. (More on menial tasks as new-age enlightenment in a bit.)
So the first task is to find someone who will hire you for only three months. You need to convince Mr. Manager that you, dear Eagle, are truly the "quick learner" that you say you are. Do a quick cost-benefit analysis for the guy. Explain that though you realize that hiring people is a boulder in the river of cash flow, your sheer brilliance at menial tasks and your irrelevant skills in the liberal arts will help the cash-flow stream irrigate a forest of money-growing trees. Cross your fingers and hope that Mr. Manager doesn't know anything about economics (or rivers) or that he is too nice to call your bluff.
Admit the following: You don't go to school locally, you won't keep the job indefinitely, you don't have experience, and you have another job that doesn't pay. Some people will tell you to lie. These people are liars, and you shouldn't trust them.
As a senior, I had my last go at this process this year. I hope. In past summers, I've cleaned day-old gummi bears out of drains in the floor, I've sang for tips at a well-known ice cream franchise like the minimum-wage lackey that I am. I've worked at a coffee shop so understaffed that they hired me - on the spot, for the day.
I've clearly done my fair share of pushing papers. I've choreographed a dance to that inane "I want to be in America" song from West Side Story and attempted to teach it to inattentive and uncoordinated third-graders, including one that was the bane of my 14-year-old existence, whose name just happened to be … Maria. And suddenly that name / Will never be the same / To me. ("No, the stomps come on 'I,' 'be,' and 'mer, ick, ah.' See? I clap-clap be clap-clap, mer clap ick clap ah clap. Maria, it's not nice when you shove Olivia into the wall-mounted pencil sharpener in the corner.")
But remember, dear Eagle, you are never overqualified for the job you have. Otherwise, you would have a better job.
To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, that American high priest of hard work: Finish each task and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new task, begin it well and serenely with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Remember that every job you have is a "learning experience." (And I use this term in the most benign way, not in the way that is a euphemism for "it seemed like a good idea at the time.")
May your talents serve you well in your future career as a doctor, or lawyer, or business executive.
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