(AKA…A Rant)
My College Experience:
I’m currently a junior in college finishing my third year of work-study. I’m glad that I’m doing work-study simply to gain valuable job experience. However, at the same time, it’s so hard to get a job! When I was a freshman, I applied to ten different positions and was only offered an interview for two. Luckily, one of the jobs offered me a position, but it was working for a daycare which had nothing to do with what I wanted to do in the future.
My sophomore year, I applied to fifteen positions and was offered an interview for one! This job was working as a math tutor, again not what I wanted to do after graduation. For my junior year, I applied to fifteen positions again and was offered an interview for three, which was a slight improvement. You see, I was excited to do work-study because I was told the jobs are easy to find and you can work in a position that is related to your interests.
This is completely false!
I applied for jobs related to my interests and never even get offered interviews. Most of the work-study jobs require you to have previous experience, but I’m in college so how am I supposed to have previous experience? Also, with work-study, there is a limit to how much money you can earn each semester. I have never even come close to this allotted amount and found myself scrambling every semester to come up with the money that I didn’t get.
The only reason I continue to accept work-study each year is that I’m hopeful that I will get a good job with good pay. This has never happened, and you would think that after the third time, I would have learned my lesson. I’m glad that work-study exists, but there are definitely improvements to be made within the program. First and foremost, it shouldn’t be so difficult to find a job! At the end of each year, I find myself asking, “Why didn’t I change my work-study offer into a loan?”
For my senior year, I am definitely not doing work-study, because, after three years of being unsuccessful in the program, it’s finally time to realize that it’s never going to work out in my favor.
