The holiday season is widely trademarked by family time and gift-giving, but for many students, it’s also a time to gain a little extra cash or professional experience.
Students choose to work for a variety of reasons, too.
For Joshua Svetz, a junior journalism and mass communication major, winter break is a time to make money to put towards his college tuition, as well as general lifestyle expenses.
“Work-study barely keeps my expenses afloat and I need the extra cash for bills and loans,” he said. “I’ll work for UPS until Christmas.”
Anna Rine, a junior marketing major, plans to work this break, as well — working at J Crew (in the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls) and continuing an internship from this past summer. She’ll also be interning for The P&A Group in Buffalo for professional experience, where she interned this summer.
“P&A is a small sales group that sells health benefits,” she said. “I had an internship there over the summer, and my supervisor said that if I wanted to actually work over winter break, I can. I am pretty sure I’m working in the finance department or will just be continuing my internship in the marketing department.”
Students, such as Svetz and Rine, are part of a larger demographic of student workers, too. Seasonal employment has been on a steady rise since 2008 — with over 700,000 individuals have sought seasonal work in 2015, according to statista.com.
Also, there’s good news for students planning to or thinking about work this break: “Forty-four percent of hiring managers expect to pay $10 or more per hour and 12 percent expect to pay $16 or more per hour,” careerbuilder.com claims.
Unfortunately, for students yet to secure a job, 77 percent of hiring managers don’t plan to accept applications for seasonal employment past November; however, some students have found alternative modes of cash flow.
Svetz added that, while he hopes to make the bulk of his cash working for the world’s largest package delivery company, he wants to get some professional experience in his field.
“[I’ll] probably freelance broadcast and write for my newspaper,” Svetz added.
Madeline Faircloth, a senior journalism and mass communication major, summed up seasonal work in one, definitive statement: “Any kind of work is good for personal growth and learning how to do things on your own.”
And, so, she added it’s worth keeping an open mind — whether a seasonal job is directly relevant to students’ fields of interest or not.
mcgurllt14@bonaventure.edu
