On the day of my 15th birthday my parents’ asked when I would be ready to go out with them and start finding jobs around town. I gently reminded mom and pops I was still under the protection of child labor laws until 16.
They asked again the following year and when I got my license my dad handed me the keys to the Honda Accord and said, “Well, get to it, then.
” So I did. At one point I worked three jobs and was under the impression that’s what kids my age were supposed to do. When my father passed away suddenly the summer before my freshman year of college I immediately submerged myself in the workforce to primarily bury my grief in the tables I bussed. The money was just an added bonus.It wasn’t until I entered college and I passed by kids on the phone with their parents asking for money to be transferred into their account, until I asked my peers where they work and was given a confused look and told, “All I have to do is get A’s, my parents take care of the rest”, until I consistently had to keep turning down my friends’ invitations to parties because I was working doubles back to back, that I questioned my college experience thus far.
I boiled it down to two explanations: either I was being cheated out of a fruitful young adulthood since 16 or the kids I went to school with came from a background of far more monetary privilege than I could wrap my head around. I became envious of the life with responsibilities limited to merely being present for class and achieving fair grades.
In my world, play was a luxury only afforded to me when I could get a shift covered. I entertained the idea of quitting my job, to live freely among my friend group and not be shackled by the confines of an establishment that didn’t contribute to my long term career goals. That fantasy vanished when I realized the one in the morning trips to Dumpling Cafe, the wack cover charges for crappy house parties, train fare, or warm boots for the winter would not be possible without a source of income.
I couldn’t mooch off my newly widowed mom. The financial burden she faced after my dad’s death was already proving too much to handle, and asking her for beer money would be a backhanded insult. So I withered, constantly wondering if this was the nature of adulthood and, if true, bitter it came so early for me.
The moment I stopped feeling sorry for myself was the moment I realized the benefits I reaped from my part-time job besides money. My interpersonal skills became finely tuned over the years. It especially worked to my advantage during interviews for internships. Plus, my work ethic shined in the extracurricular activities I immersed myself in when I wasn’t handling hot plates and drunken patrons, and I became substantially more conscious about my spending habits. On top of that, I worked with people all too familiar with the act of “adulting” and I knew who to ask for advice on filing taxes, sniffing out a seedy real estate agent, loan payment hacks, and personal finance advice I wish I could have learned in high school instead of dead end calculus equations.
I had the upper hand and the prospect of what added responsibilities of adulthood laid ahead seemed less terrifying. I also became less strict about the amount of time during the week I allotted for “fun.” At the end of the day, I chose to shoulder the responsibility of a near full-time job coupled with a heavy class load—no one else could be held accountable. My friends were good people and their privilege didn’t dictate their actions towards me and vice versa. We all shared a common fear of what would happen after we graduated and no amount of waiting tables could prepare me for that.
Would I have been a different person had I not chosen to work a part-time job on the side? Probably, but having so much free time on my hands to immerse in college culture wouldn’t exactly have made me a better person. Looking back, I don’t regret choosing to work those three back to back 12 hour doubles, as I reaped what I sowed. I slinked back to my dorm every night, removing my ranch stained apron, splaying the crinkled bills across my desk and thinking, “I earned every dollar.”
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