Why high schoolers should have jobs

Maxwell Bowman, Staff Writer

When you get to your high school years, money becomes more of a prevalent issue as adult responsibilities crop up, such as saving up for a car and trying to afford your first year of college. For many at Vandegrift, these struggles are easily amended by a well-off family passing down their wealth, but for some, they have to struggle to earn such commodities. The challenge of balancing both a job and school can be crippling to many students’ social lives, extra curricular activities, sports and even grades. But it’s these challenges that help you better yourself as an adult and help you grow into a mature person. If you were to ask me, getting a job is one of the best things a high schooler can do.

You plan your activities around your job; your job doesn’t make its schedule around you. Most high schoolers are pressured by their employers to work as many hours as they physically can, regardless of their school schedule or any projects they have due. As a susceptible teenager who wants more than anything to do good at their first job and are just not mature enough to say no yet, many fall to the peer pressure of working way more hours than they should, resulting in a steady decline in sleep and grades. This also hurts their employers too, as the students eventually crack under pressure from being overworked due to their inability to say no and quitting without notice.

However, these negatives lead to making you a more mature person. Jobs are most people’s transitions into the real world, their first taste of adult responsibilities and their immediate repercussions. You learn how to manage your time more efficiently. You start learning how to cope under pressure and push yourself to work harder. Your video games stay turned off longer as your priority shift to more pressing matters. In the long run, the sooner you get a job, the easier it will be to graduate and transition into adulthood. But there’s a right way to go about it, lest you want to to avoid the consequences previously mentioned.

As someone who’s been working at the same job since sophomore year, and who has seen a multitude of high schoolers come and go, it’s interesting to see how working a job affects us as we grow and mature. When you’re first starting out on your job, it’s difficult to deal with the responsibilities that most of us have not. You see the ones who crack under pressure, the ones who grow into more hardworking adults and the ones who take off running. It’s a whole different world and I can’t recommend it enough. Plus, it gives you an excuse to not do the dishes when you get home.