For This Local Teen, Finding a Summer Job is No Easy Task

Another school year has flown by! In a couple of weeks, it will be summer for the students of . This summer I plan to sleep in late, hang out with my friends, go swimming and basically do nothing. However, my mother ruined my fantasy by telling me what my real plan is. She told me to get a summer job. I thought "Oh this should be easy." How wrong I was.

I survived a year of auditions for orchestra and school plays, yet this didn’t prepare me for the challenge of finding a job.

The first problem I encountered was that nobody seemed to be hiring. The economy is so bad right now that it makes it nearly impossible for teenagers to find jobs. There is so much competition for the few jobs available. It is not just fellow teenagers, but adults with more experience applying for the same job I am. One of the jobs I applied for had 75 other people applying for only five open positions. I notice that kids that found jobs got them from recommendations from their peers and parents. Since my parents have connections and my friends are all unemployed, I face a greater challenge than most teenagers. Not to mention I turn 16 in the middle of June when most summer jobs have been filled. 

Finding a summer jobs is not only time consuming, but painful. It is hard to deal with rejection. When I got rejected from my first application I immediately wanted to stop applying. However, my mom said "for every yes there will be at least 40 no's."

In my childhood, society did not prepare me for rejection. In my sports year, every team member got a medal. Everyone was a winner. I guess this is good if you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but this does not teach us how to deal with rejection. So I guess I’ll try and get a medal for perseverance and keep looking for a job.

I try to put on a happy face and be prepared. I wrote my own resume, and asked some teachers to write recommendation letters. I’m ready to apply for a job at any moment now. I’m trying to target areas of my interests and my strengths. I’m trying to network with friends and their parents. So you can see it is difficult to find a job without the right connections. I know I’m not the only teenager who is experiencing this problem.

There must be a job somewhere for me. I need to find someone willing to hire me, or else I have to deal with the wrath of my mother all summer. This prospect keeps me highly motivated to find a job.