Ah you gotta love springtime:  no more snow (knock on wood), halfway decent weather, the stress of final exams, and the reality that summer is almost here, which for a lot of us means finding summer work.  At about 3 weeks and counting until school lets out, I was still completely up in the air as to what I was going to do.

When I started school last year, I was just starting to learn the basics of blogging.  In my naïve venture, I figured I could casually build my blog through the school year and by this summer be making enough money to not have to work.  Yeah right.  I found out pretty quick that a few hours a week devoted to blogging does not equal much revenue! 

So then I realized I would indeed need to find summer work.  I really wanted to find something in the banking/finance fields to get some more experience at what I’m studying.  I talked to the banks in town, and they couldn’t be less enthusiastic to give me a position.  Alright, so plan B was a no go.

At this point I was starting to get a little bit worried.  My budget was getting tight, and I wasn’t any closer to finding anything.  It doesn’t help that in southern Iowa there aren’t many options unless you’re willing to commute. I considered trying to find work in Des Moines, but even driving my Civic would get expensive with the 80+ mile round-trip commute and gas that gets more expensive by the week.

And then out of the blue my boss from last summer called.  I detailed cars last year at a car wash in town, and although I didn’t mind it too much I just figured I would move on and find something else.  However, as I considered my options, detailing again began to look like the best route to take.  It’s close to home, has a flexible schedule, is active work, I get to work with a couple of my buds, and I get free car washes!  Considering the alternative is to spend my last 3 weeks of school in a stressed-out state of desperately trying to find something, I think this is the best choice.  I would have liked to have found something relevant to my studies, but I’m still at least 3 years from graduating so there will be plenty of time for that.  Besides, we usually get done with our vehicles early in the afternoon, so when it’s not too unbearably hot I can spend the afternoon hacking away on the golf course!  There’s no better place to spend a summer day!

I really got lucky here though.  Without this opportunity, there’s a good chance I would have been jobless when summer break started.  I made a couple of big mistakes:

- I didn’t start early enough:  Employers are trying to find their seasonal help early, and by the time I finally got around to looking, a lot of opportunities were already gone.  This is especially true this year, with the sagging economy causing a lot of employers to cut back.

-I didn’t have a resume:  I’ve never had to use one in the past, and with everything else going on right now the last thing I wanted to worry about was trying to scrape one together.  From now on I need to keep an updated one at all times.  You never know when an opportunity will pop up and you’ll need to respond quick. 

It looks like it’s going to work out though, and I’m definitely glad.  I’m sure there are a lot of teens out there who are still struggling with this right now.  I’m in the process of finalizing what I want to use for a budget this summer, and I’ll post it up here soon.   Auf Wiedersehen!