Oberlin Blogs

Employment?

August 10, 2009

Zoe McLaughlin ’11

I've spent the past week or so trying to figure out when I'm going to get back to campus and what I'm going to do once I get there. Now, for most people, this isn't an issue. Incoming freshmen will arrive around August 25th and returning students are allowed to start moving in on August 29th. Last year, I moved in on the appointed date, organized my room, hung up posters, and was ready to go. This year, things are a bit more complicated.

It's my grandmother's birthday on the twenty-third, so my extended family is all preparing to mass just outside Cleveland for the party. Of course, my immediate family is going out for that, but the way I see it, it doesn't make much sense for me to go back home with them, only to turn right around almost immediately and head back to Ohio.

Showing a little foresight for once, I started investigating jobs that would allow me to arrive early on campus, with somewhat minimal success. There were jobs, but they were either not being filled at the moment, or the first people they hired were from students who had been working all summer already.

As the summer progressed, I sent out a few e-mails inquiring about potential jobs that had opened up. I also applied to work in the dining hall via an online application. This week, all of this has been coming to fruition, so here's how things stand right now.

It looks like I'm going to be working in some sort of mixture of the dining hall and the Early Arrival desk. In the dining hall, I'll be doing everything from serving food to washing dishes, as well as some catering. At the Early Arrival desk, I think I'll mainly be signing people in who have (surprise, surprise) arrived early. And that's as much as I know right now.

I'm excited to get back to campus, but this means I have to do a lot of packing in a very short amount of time. I should probably start making a list...

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