Jobs for College Students

• Author: Michael |University Scholar
• Filed under: College Advice
• Date: Feb 22,2008

The first day of class your professor makes the effort to say “You should not have a job! You should be spending three hours studying for every hour in class!”

You just laugh, because if you are like me, working is absolutely necessary if you want to live. Eating is important, and it is nice to go to the movies on occasion or go to a concert, just to keep your sanity.

But are there other options for college students? Can you get by without working during college semesters? I believe that working, at a restaurant, Wal-Mart, Target, at a grocery store, or other typical college and high school student jobs, is unnecessary. I will offer you other possibilities that will supply you with enough money to live during college without a “job”.

If you had a job, how many hours do you think you would work? 20 hours? At $8 dollars an hour, 20 hours a week would be $160 dollars a week. That would be $640 a month. Do you really need $640 a month? I know I don’t. This is how much I need

• $100 car insurance
• $20 cell phone
• $100 gas (if you don’t have a job to drive to you don’t need as much gas!)
• $40 fun (You should be able to have fun with $40 a month.)
• $200 food? (You may not even need food, if it is part of room and board.

That is a $460 total. To make that much a month, you only need to work 15 hours a week. See, I am already saving you some time!

Use Your 15 hours of Work as 15 Hours of Study Time

Think if you had 15 additional hours to study! Alright so take away 3 hours, because you would have a breaks at work so you should have breaks while studying. So you still have 12 hours extra a week to study! The average reader reads about 200 words per minute. At that rate, during your extra 13 hours you could read a 450-page book a week. That is a book a week. Wow!

And that is for the average reader. If you are reading 400 pages a week if you start as an average reader, I doubt you will remain one for long. You could reach a reading level of 600 words per minute. In that case, you could almost read 3×500 page books in a week.

With that much time to study, there is no reason that you should not have a 4.0 GPA.

But you’re asking, “Where is the Money?” Well, that is the difficult, there is no guarantee that you will get scholarship money, but if you can maintain a 4.0 GPA, I bet that you will get some scholarships.

And if you are going to university that costs $5,000 a semester, and you end up getting all of that. $5,000 a semester is a lot more than the $2,800 you would be making working 20 hours a work at $8 an hour, and don’t forget, if you work Uncle Sam takes some of that cash away. If you get a scholarship, you keep all of it!

Blogging (What is a blog? Read the Wikipedia article)

Before I continue I would like you to read this article regarding how much a Blogging can make. According to the survey, about 20% of bloggers make between $100 and $500 dollars a month. Some make even more (if you blog and make more than $500 congratulation!)

Blogging Supplements both your Income and Your Education

You spend 15 hours a week in school, spend 15 hour studying, and eventually your mind is consumed by everything you study. So what is the best thing to blog about? Your Major! I am a history and economics major; therefore, I will blog about history and economics. This will work out perfect for me. Let’s go through the steps with history.

1. I take a course on the American Revolution.
2. I learn a lot from the text I read and from the professor.
3. I blog about what I learn.
4. Because I am blogging and I want to offer something unique to compete with other internet sources, I am greatly inclined to go beyond my basic studies and do more research concerning the American Revolution.
5. My blog now has more information and I attract more views, and increase my profits!
6. Not only do I earn more money by increasing my Blog profit, there is a greater chance of me receiving more scholarships, because I have become well informed regarding the American Revolution and I impress my Professor. (In another words I kick all the other student’s butts.)
7. My Professor gets together with his colleagues and they decide to give me a $1,000 scholarship!

This is of course an ideal scenario; however, it is not that difficult to see why it could easily become reality.

Your blog will also supplement your summer job, because your blog will still be on the internet, still making money. When you get that full-time job during the summer, you will be making $1,000 a month plus $100-$500 from your blog. (Learn to make a blog)

Internships

Internships will be beneficial to you depending on your chosen degree. Many internships do not pay you. Darn! Well, it’s not so bad. Doing an internship will increase your chances of getting a well paying job right after you finish college. An internship could be the difference between a $40,000 a year job and a $60,000 job. Sounds good to me.

If you are going to do an internship, you will need to begin planning early in your college career. Start looking at possible places to intern and research what will make you a better applicant to be accepted into the internship.

If you have to get a job, Get a Job on Campus

If you can get a job on campus, get it. Most Campus jobs will pay you less than other companies will; however, campus jobs usually do not require much work. You probably have seen someone “working” on campus, usually the person is sitting at a computer browsing the internet or studying.

If you can guarantee that as a campus employee, you will be spending most of your time doing nothing. Then it may be perfect for a blogger. You could be being paid to blog, as your blog makes you more money.

Even though blogging while working sounds perfect, I do not suggest you do so. If you are working on campus, you have a great opportunity to get involved and meet all of the University Faculty. In the future, those faculty members can write an excellent letter of recommendation, which will be more beneficial to you later in life than your blog. Also, if the faculty members see you spending all of your time on the computer, while you could and should be working, their letter of recommendation may end
up a letter of rejection.

Things You Should Not Do: Paid Surveys

If you do some internet browse of online jobs, you will probably come across things called paid surveys. Paid surveys are the worst thing you could do! Just take my word for it, I have attempted paid surveys, you will end up making $5 dollars an hour. They are just not worth it.