The author's son (not pictured) enjoyed his summer job in another state so much that he's returning this year.
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As adolescents, my wife and I both had summer jobs. In Iowa, she pushed a cart around the library, reshelving books. In Oregon, I pushed a mail cart through the antiseptic-laced hallways of the hospital where my mother worked. I also collated and stapled thick packets of photocopies by hand and alphabetized hundreds of files. Though technology has taken over those particular tasks, that first job taught me other, more lasting lessons. I gained independence by mastering new skills without a parent or teacher's guidance. There was also something special about seeing my labor transformed into a check and then cash in hand. This earned money had a different value to me.Finally, I learned — almost immediately — that I did not want to spend the rest of my working years alphabetizing files. As I watched the clock's slow-moving minute hand tick toward my lunch break, it dawned on me that the surest path away from this sort of tedious, repetitive work was getting into college — and that my GPA was going to have long-lasting, real-world consequences. That's the sort of feeling I wanted my son to experience, too.
