March 2004

Parent to parent: Summer plans

By Mom Marion

March is the month when summer starts peeping around the corner, like a child waiting to be called to dinner. For parents, it's the month when we ask our college students with growing urgency, "What are you planning to do this summer?"

At UC Davis, freshman year is the only year when most students are not yet locked into a lease. This means that the pull to stay on campus is not strong for most freshmen; it grows for sophomores and juniors, who may stay in Davis or explore other options.

When my daughter was a freshman, I was glad she wasn't tied to campus, because I wanted her home. A job sounded like a good idea to me, a way to recover a bit of the money that pumped out of our house like a broken water main during the school year.

Simple plans and time with friends

I did want her to be learning something, but I didn't care what. She told me she would look for a job as a waitress, and I was satisfied.

As summer drew closer, however, I started hearing about other students' plans. Many were seeking resumé-enhancing occupations, and the word "internship" became as insistent as "SAT review course" during the last years of high school. I wondered if my daughter's simple plans were a mistake.

Then she came home, exhausted after a freshman year that had been far more stressful than I realized. In the first weeks, old high-school friends gathered at my house, scattered to the job search, and returned again, like a group of birds, foraging for seeds and then meeting to share.

Time with each other seemed very important.

Learning on the job

My daughter discovered that it's hard to become a waitress without experience, so she settled for cashier work at a local restaurant.

Slow periods at the cash register gave her time to look around. She came to respect the cooks, all immigrants, who worked very hard. She noticed that the managers ranged from competent to flaky, and she made plans for how she would do the job, if she ever got it. She learned that customers can be nasty, and she came home practically in tears after one woman told her, "You're too dumb to add."

On the job my daughter learned about irrationality, inequity and hard work. She already knew that large chunks of a paycheck disappear in mysterious governmental categories, but she felt it more vividly after long hours on her feet. Most important, I noticed that the year of college had given her language to describe what she was seeing at work. In talking about it, she used words like "gender" and "class," and she was highly aware of racial issues.

My conclusions

Three years later, I can tell you that it didn't matter that she passed up internships, travel and advanced coursework that first summer. We have both learned that it's easier to land higher level jobs or internships when you're older and have begun your major.

To parents of first-year students, I say, don't push your student to snag that career-enhancing internship after one year at college. It's OK to let students take a more ordinary job, to regroup and acquire some money. Thanks to the amazing, mind-expanding first year of college, students will learn from whatever they do.

By sophomore or junior year they will use that knowledge to take flight. I have discovered, with pride and regret, that their new wings may take them far from home.

This article, now slightly revised, was first published in the March 2003 issue of the Aggie Family Pack newsletter.

Newspaper columnist Marion Franck is the mother of two college students, a freshman and a senior. She has worked with UC Davis students as a lecturer.

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