The Secret To Getting A Summer Job (And Why You Should)

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Getting out of school for summer can offer a great opportunity to make a little money. While most students end up rotting away searching the internet, talking to friends, and maybe playing some video games, the brave few will actually head out into the real world and search for a job.

A job over summer can be a great way to make a little cash. Through the school year, you're always going to be limited with the number of hours you can put in but during summer you're going to have a whole lot easier a time trying to make a ton of money.

Unfortunately, in recent years, it's been getting harder and harder for most students to find summer work. It can be easy to let the challenges and apathy take over...

Why You Should Worry About It

Most of the students that “want” to get a job over summer end up spending the whole summer half-assing their attempts. They just fill out applications and hope for the best. A few weeks into summer they might even say, “Screw it, it's too late to get a job anyway.” If that's what you're planning on doing then I couldn't blame you for giving up now. There is no need to waste your time trying to get a job if you really don't care.

There are some real good reasons to care though.

First of all, don't you want to treat yourself to something nice. While parents may have to work their jobs to pay for their family, homes, and bills, most students don't have much to worry about other than themselves. The money you make from a job can often help you buy that new car, or that new outfit, or whatever it is you're dreaming about.

Second, college isn't cheap. If you're going to college then you need to consider saving up a little money to help pay it off. While you can get student loans to pay it off, loans end up costing a fortune more in the long run. This is particularly true if you're from an average middle class family. In that situation, you don't get particularly favorable loan terms relative to some students. It's better to pay those school payments in advance than worry about finding a loan to pay them.

Assuming you're truly motivated to find that job then it's time to get started. If you're not motivated then you might as well stop. I'm serious. I won't tell anyone. I completely understand not wanting a job. Just don't waste your time trying to fool yourself.

It's Not What You Know

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It's the most over-reported secret of getting a job. You've probably heard the old phrase at least a hundred times already in your life. “It's not what you know. It's who you know.” This is particularly true when you're looking to get your first job.

The easiest way to get a job (especially a good one,) is to know someone. Companies don't like hiring random people off the street. They know that anyone they hire can end up costing a whole lot of money if they don't work out. That makes it a whole lot easier for a company to focus on hiring people that they have more information on.

If you know a hiring manager then that's absolutely ideal. Talk to that person and be direct that you're looking for a job. If you're polite, qualified, and not picky, you'll have a good chance of finding a job.

Of course, most of us don't know a hiring manager. That's alright though. Even knowing a regular employee at a company can get you the leg up for an interview. Talk to friends that have jobs and ask if they can help you get a job at their company. Oftentimes, one recommendation from a well-liked employee will get you in the place for an interview.

This might seem a little odd but it's general policy for most companies in the world.

Don't know anyone? Well, it's not the end of the world. It just becomes a little more challenging.

Don't Be Picky

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I mentioned these three words in the previous section and I hope you noticed them. They're one of the most important factors you need to keep in mind looking for a summer job. I'm sorry but most of the jobs you're going to be able to get, aren't all that awesome. I know you don't want to have to be a fast food employee but, sometimes, you gotta do it.

Getting the first job is the hardest part. Once you have a job and leave a good impression, you have significantly more friends with jobs, and a much more attractive application for other jobs.

The more picky you get, the more impossible you make the whole situation. Unfortunately, most people aren't going to be able to distinguish how awesome you are without some kind of a work history backing it up. To get that work history, you sometimes have to compromise.

Don't only focus on not being picky with your job choices though. You also want to be open for anything in the actual job. The interviewer might ask how many hours a week you're available to work. If you say, ten or five, you're going to be way less attractive than if you said, as much as you need me. If they ask if you have a position preference then you can say one but make it clear you're looking to get your foot in the door. (After they find out how amazing you are you can leverage yourself where you want to be.)

Finding a summer job can be a great way to keep your mind active during the summer. While most students sit around and look for the most thoughtless forms of entertainment, you'll be working your brain in unique and powerful ways. That pays off more than with your paycheck. It also helps you become a better prepared student in the future.

Do you want to know how Yoda would teach you to study? Be sure to follow this blog and check out my books on the subject.

How Much Did Your School Year Suck?

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The biggest mistake a person can make is evading reality. When most students finish their school year they instantly try to forget all of the unpleasant school year memories. They try to forget the tests they disappointed themselves on and the mistakes they made. That's understandable but don't let yourself lose sight of reality in all this.

The people that fail in life are not the people that make mistakes. In fact, the vast majority of your life is going to be mistakes. Outside of schooling, mistakes are the expected norm. The successes often come in small doses. You'll end up thinking, “Well... That failed almost completely but... this one part of it worked.” Then you can build off of that single small bit of success you find. (Sometimes you won't even find a shred of success.)

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. In fact, you should be more worried when you don't make any mistakes. When you don't make any mistakes you have to wonder if you're not looking at the situation right, or if you're settling for too low a standard. If you're just blind to your own failure then, objectively, you'll never know how to improve. If you don't care to increase your standards, you better hope the world doesn't leave you behind.

Worse than all of those decisions is the following decision I'm going to describe. This is how the vast majority of people manage their life. Students are certainly not the only sufferers of this decision. When this decision is made it completely eliminates any potential progress from life.

OoOoOohhh SHINY THINGS!

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At the end of the school year the average student doesn't even think about how well their school year went. Since they passed their courses, they no longer think twice about how the courses went. It's summer and they suddenly have way more important things to think about. For the most part, I agree with that. The problem comes when students don't spend any time reviewing their own school year.

It can seem so easy to spend a couple hours thinking about it but most students still try to distract themselves through video games or conversations with friends. I can't speak for every student but I can remember exactly why I didn't like to think about my school year growing up.

I hated school. I despised every day I was forced into it. Early on at least, I did not care about any of it. I hated being ordered around by teachers. I hated being judged by other students. I hated that they forced me to do more work when I got home. To put it simply, I hated it.

When summer came, the last thing I wanted to do was think about the suffering I endured all year. I wanted to pretend that it never even happened. I wanted to imagine none of the teachers, non-friend students, or faculty even existed. I did that through drowning myself in programming, writing, and video games.

I refused to acknowledge the emotions I was forced through. I did everything I could to forget it. (Repression anyone?) To process any of the school year, I had to process this first. It was quite painful for me and I can't even say I had it all that bad. This might be painful for you too but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The problem with not acknowledging something is that you can never actually deal with it. When you don't review your school year, you will never be able to improve the results your getting significantly. Eventually, for me, the decision to start preparing for class appropriately wasn't a subtle and easy decision. It was a harsh look back at the poor decisions I made in the past about it. No, I didn't fall for all the victim shaming that teachers do but I looked at myself and asked “When I'm subjected to things I don't approve of, am I going to make the best of it?”

Looking back at my life before that, I wasn't making the best of it. I would ignore an assignment until the day it was due. Then I'd struggle to finish it in time. Then I'd get a subpar grade and feel ashamed of it. That is not a rational way to deal with the situation. It just brings suffering on both ends. I came to realize that I either needed to stop caring about my grades or start treating my grades like something I care about.

If I stopped caring about my grades, my grades might suffer but I would at least be following my opinion. If I cared about my grades, I wouldn't actually put it off until the last second because that would be like caring about a dog and not feeding it until it was starving. That's insane. It's not the way to worry about something.

Making The Hard Decisions

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While most of your teachers, parents, and role models will give you the old, “Stay in school” mantra, I've always found it a bit insulting. If you're old enough to read this then you're old enough to know the repercussions of your decisions. Most people encourage you to avoid even thinking about this logically. They just want you to follow their directions. Following their direction is easy but it won't encourage you to improve your grades or live better.

At the end of the school year, ask yourself, are you happy with how your school year went?

If not then something needs to change. When you're looking for something to change, don't rule out anything without thinking about it first. Does that mean you should consider dropping out if you're old enough? Yes. I think it's a mistake in most cases but NEVER forget that you're the person in control of your life (you are also the one that will suffer the consequences.) When you rule out this possibility, you just encourage yourself to ignore logical options.

Why would you do this?

Because when you go back to the school, you're going to know you're making that decision for the right reasons. If you're making that decision for the right reasons then it's a whole lot easier to convince yourself to study. (You're going to be there hours a day. You might as well get what you can from it.)

I know... your teachers are going to hate me for saying this but your life is only your life when you make your own decisions. Look at the school year you had honestly. Ask yourself what you want to change and then look at the various ways to do it. Don't ignore other people's advice but don't blindly follow it either.

Are you ready to step up and make the best of the time you're in school? Be sure to check a couple of my books out to learn how to make that happen.

Is College Harder Than High School?

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The common culture surrounding college is a bit like a rhinoceros with a peg leg. It just doesn't make much sense. Depending on the source you're going to, college is either, an awesomely fun opportunity to get drunk and party or the most stressful time of your academic career.

The media is always spreading this perception of college as a fun place to go and do fun things. Naturally, it tends to ignore the boring parts about that little “going to class thing,” because it's not particularly entertaining. All they portray is the good stuff (or two seconds of a person stressing out as they try to study.) That's obviously not a very balanced perspective of college life.

High school teachers tend to give the exact opposite impression. They'll lecture students constantly about having to prepare for college. “Well... you can slack off now but you MIGHT NOT BE PREPARED FOR COLLEGE,” they'll tell you with a tone that sounds like your mother not-so-subtly hinting that you should do something. Many students that pay attention closely to these lectures start to think that college is some crazy rigorous academic boot camp. This view of college is just as insane as the media's image.

The Real Difficulty of College

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Is it academically harder? Well... I'll get to that but this is absolutely essential to understand first.

The hardest part of college for most student's is adjusting to regular everyday life. During high school, most students have parents that coddle them and offer help whenever they need it. Most students don't concern themselves with laundry, or shopping for groceries, or dinner, or anything mildly related to maintaining a home. Most don't even know how to maintain a schedule. This is where most students fall short (even if they blame their grades.)

The students that are used to doing their own laundry, buying groceries, and paying their own bills don't have nearly as many problems in college. Staying in high school 6 hours a day makes doing all those things a major challenge. If you're used to doing them through high school then college for 3 or 4 hours of class a day is a breeze.

Even the students that think they're struggling because of social pressures, or time limitations, or course challenges are really just talking about the consequence of their failure to manage their own daily life. One of the most common example's of this uses time as the excuse. Many students that fail blame their lack of time. They say they don't have enough time in their day to get the work done. That's usually complete crap. Those students usually just haven't learned to manage their own schedule right. Instead of planning for work in advance, students spend hours doing things that only feel like necessities because they haven't planned right.

When you're going to college, the most important factor you need to consider is your non-academic life. That will be where you succeed or fail. You need to learn how to set priorities in your daily life. There will be some days when you need to make tough decisions. That's generally a sign that you need to reassess what you're really looking for out of your time. You can't do everything you want. Make sure you decide on what you do consciously instead of stumbling through it.

Academic Challenge

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Many teachers make college sound like it's an unbelievably challenging environment. That is, typically, wildly untrue. Most colleges don't accept students on merit unless they're absolutely qualified and capable of competing with the academic workload. With that in mind, it does make some difference.

If you're going to a typical state university then you're probably not going to struggle with the actual academics of your courses. The challenges you will face should be close to right in line with going through high school. If you manage your life properly then you will not need all-nighters to get great grades.

If you're going to a less typical college with high standards (MIT, etc.) then you're going to probably end up struggling more. The word struggling might be a little harsher than required. Generally, you won't struggle because, if you've been accepted you're probably, again, right in line with where you should be academically. That being said, the pace is not going to be the same as a state university. That means you'll probably need to manage yourself a whole lot better than a regular college student.

If you're a good student through high school then you should have absolutely nothing to worry about academically going into college.

(I know. This belief is completely counter to the mainstream messages but it's true.)

People love to make things sound more challenging than they are.

Teachers don't want to say, “Yea. College is a breeze.” That will not motivate high school students into working hard for great grades. In a little more insulting, but no less true perspective: Most education major applicants don't get rejected from schools. That means, unfortunately, there are more “less well-endowed” teachers intellectually. (Of course, that's not all of them. It's just more likely they find it challenging than some other majors.)

People that fail to graduate from college often announce horror stories about the challenges but they're also wildly biased. No one wants to admit that they are solely responsible for their own failure to graduate from college. That leaves them blaming the college instead.

Don't believe the hype. College isn't all that bad... Unless...

Personal College Torture

You don't have to struggle through college but many students do end up adding to their own personal challenges unnecessarily.

College is not guaranteed to be a breeze.

No one should go into college expecting to get perfect or even nearly perfect scores. I know, it's possible but it's an absolutely insane waste of time and energy. Students that spend too much energy trying to perfect everything are the same students that end up driving themselves nuts and hating their lives in the process. Don't fall into that trap.

For typically good students, college is as difficult as you make it. If you require a 99 or 100 score to be happy then you're going to need to study all-day, and everyday to be “happy.” In most cases, studying that much will take away your happiness anyway.

Great grades aren't the only way a student can end up drowning in their own workload though.

Some majors are not appropriate for some students. I know, it's not something anyone likes to admit but it's true. A student that hates math IS going to struggle to get an engineering degree. A student that hates English is going to hate getting an English degree. This should make sense to most people.

If you don't like a subject then don't do it! It's not an investment if you're setting yourself up for a life you'll absolutely hate. I'm not one of those “do only what you love” people but really, don't do what you hate and expect not to struggle.

It goes farther than that though.

Medical (and a few other majors) are notoriously difficult. While most students that don't hate the major can survive the course load, don't expect to dominate everything in one of those competitive majors. That's just asking for disappointment.

So... college is appropriately harder than high school but don't stress out about it. It's right in line with the next level of your education. The hardest part is managing your personal life. If you can take care of that then your academic life is going to be no more challenging than high school.

(Oh... and the parties are never as fun as they look on TV.)

Want to be prepared to kick-ass through college? Be sure to check out my books.

5 Reasons You Shouldn't Be Worrying About Your Finals Scores

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I recently received a email from a student that I found terribly depressing. If I had a glass of water I would have splashed him in the face with it. Heck, if I was in his general region I'd go out of my way to slap him for thinking this way. “SNAP OUT OF IT!” I'd scream.

This student spent his email talking about how terrible he thought he did on his finals. He was absolutely convinced that he bombed. He found the idea of waiting for the test scores dreadful. Now... I sympathize with worrying about a test score but in this case, I could make an exception...

Why couldn't I sympathize with him? Because this student is someone I've talked to a boatload of times already. I know him to be an A student. Really... he didn't bomb.

So... if you're suffering as you wait for your finals scores to be announced. Keep these five things in mind:

1. Good Students Have A Buffer

If you're the kind of student that's worried about your finals score then you're probably the kind of student with a buffer. If you're a B or higher student then you probably could completely fail your finals and still get a passing grade. If you're a C student then you probably would still need to fail pretty bad on the finals for a fail in the course.

If you're a D student... Yea... Sorry... Can't help you there. This is one of the reasons you need to treat the rest of the school year so well. It makes the end of the school year a whole lot easier to manage.

But seriously, the vast majority of students stressing out about their finals scores are the same students that have nothing to worry about. A few points are not the end of the world. Worrying is just going to do more harm than good.

If you absolutely need to then just look at your class information and try to figure out what you'll score if you completely bombed it. Usually, you'll find that the worst case scenario isn't the end of the world. (If you find out otherwise then make sure to kiss the ones you love goodbye. Oh... and take out tons of loans.)

2. It's All Over

Despite that knot hanging around in your stomach, there is absolutely nothing you can do about your finals scores after you take your finals. (Short of bribery.) You've taken the test. The moment is over.

Stress is meant to help you prepare for things in the future. When the test has been taken, the stress is not telling you to worry about that test score. It's telling you that you need to learn one of two lessons. Either, you need to prepare better for your finals in the future. Or... You need to learn to relax a little bit after the moments over.

Learn your lesson and move on with the more important things in your life.

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3. The Pleasantly Surprised Principle

The vast majority of students worry, at least a little, about their final's scores. I've worked with tons of students and just about everyone of them holds some kind of inking of doubt after a major test. That's completely natural. Students like to prepare for the worst. That could even be a good thing. There is one thing that I learned from all this though. I call it “The Pleasantly Surprised Principle.”

The students that worry about their test scores usually end up pleasantly surprised. The students that don't worry about their test scores can go either way.

Worrying is a sign that you value your test scores. The fact that you value your test scores suggests you are the kind of student that prepares appropriately for your tests. That means, you're probably going to end up pleasantly surprised after all this.

4. Lessons To Learn

If you're actually completely convinced you failed the test then you have a more important reason to relax a little. By this, I'm not just talking about a little worried. I'm talking about, if you took the test and had to guess completely on most of the questions. In this case, you have very good reason to be concerned.

When you bomb a test completely, it probably means you were terribly prepared for the test. That even goes for those of you saying you're just a terrible test taker. Terrible test taking can cause major problems but it's not the sole cause of bombing any test.

You're worrying because you have a problem that you need to solve. You need to figure out why you bombed the test (not just excuses) and solve that problem. If you don't you're going to be stuck with this same nasty feeling in your stomach every year for the rest of school.

(This blog may be able to help. Check out the articles.)

5. IT'S SUMMER!

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Seriously... Don't you dare waste the beautiful weather. You'll have plenty of time to worry about your finals later. School means absolutely nothing compared to the time you have. This summer you're being offered one of the greatest gifts in life. (When you get a full time job you'd kill for a summer off.) Enjoy it.

School will still be there in a few months. Good news or bad news, you're still going to be able to get those grades recovered from. What you can't ever do, is get the time you waste back.

Does that mean you should drop the books and learning and hang outside until your skin burns to a crisp? No, but make sure you save at least a little time for doing the things that you love. Don't let the stress of the school year ruin all of your summer.

So... Relax a little. You're worrying now is not going to change anything about your finals scores (assuming they're over!) Be sure to check out this blog regularly and maybe even get one of my books on studying faster.