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Let’s face it, not everybody can go through college without earning at least some income.  I certainly needed to earn money.  While my tuition and books were paid for with financial aid along with most of my rent, I needed to eat, drive, park, and of course go out and entertain myself.  While I may have needed to go out more than most you get the picture: you needed a good share of money to get through college. 

Forget about internships or jobs at the library.  You’re in college and believe me you have your whole life to work.  So, I thought about all of the college jobs I had (I was in school for 8 years mind you) and that my friends had and here is my list of top jobs to get to earn money while in college.   

9. Mall retail - Every college has a mall nearby and you go there to buy stuff.  If you are a clothes hog there are 5 stores minimum that need help on a part time flexible basis.  If you like electronics, music, or video games same thing.  Whatever store you spend the most money in - that’s the store for you (maybe it’s the food court, who knows).  Some stores have better perks than others so check out the incentives before signing on.  Most will have some good discounts for employees.  If your a big shopper you are basically increasing your hourly wage with all the discounts on stuff you would be buying anyway.

8. Hotel Room Service - If there are several nice hotels in your college town working in the room service/dining services is pretty cool.  One pitfall to try and avoid is working the early morning shift.  If your like me, it’s easier to stay up than wake up so try and land the night shift.  This will be more condusive to your schedule for school anyway.  The tips are OK at best but you get a decent hourly wage and cheap food is easy to come by.  Another good perk if you get in good with the hotel managers is cheap rooms for your out of town visitors.  Like when your parents want to come for parents weekend and you can show them the library where you spend your days studying.      

7. Fast food restaurants - You need to eat, so why not get a job where you already buy your meals.  Make a few bucks and enjoy all the reduced/free meals you can stuff down your gullet.  Make sure the workplace is flexible (Most places in college towns already have this down pat) and is somewhere you would eat yourself.

6. Pizza Delivery - A little more flexible usually than a traditional fast food restaurant and can usually net a few more bucks per hour and who doesn’t love pizza (I lived on it for several years).  Of course you need a car.  I suggest using your roomates as they usually get beat to hell.  It is also essential to know the pizza places delivery zone.  Don’t get stuck with crappy tips delivering to college students, go to the nice part of town.

5.  Valet Parking - If you get with the right nightspot/service this can usually be a pretty good job.  The tips are usually pretty good and you get to drive some really nice cars.  This job is usually really flexible as you are mostly needed at night and of course on weekends but most valet companies have a stable of people so working when you want is usually not that big of a hassle.  Make sure you have a clean driving record or don’t bother.  This job can also supplement your pizza delivery job if your selfish roomate won’t let you use his car.

4. Liquor Promotions - Look, chances are you were planning on going to the bar this weekend anyway so instead of paying cover, working on your hangover, and getting a bunch of fake phone numbers why not do liquor promotions.  They actually pay people money to set up bar games or give out samples of their product.  Skip the cover, stay sober, make money and have a constant stream of people actually waiting to talk to YOU! 

3. Club Scrubber/Bevarage Cart Driver @ a golf course - Working at a golf course is so much fun.  It is a job based on tips so it has it’s ups and downs but usually you have enough good days to offset the slow ones.  The job is usually very flexible and is a great way to meet some of your future bosses.  The greatest perk of all usually consists of as many buckets of balls you want to hit whenever, free/deeply discounted golf on slow days, (Be very helpful/nice to the pro and you will be amazed at what kind of tee times you can get) and most importantly golf tips/lessons from everyone that gets tired of you asking.  Jump on the putting green in between working, I should have never quit!

2. Doorman, Waiter or Waitress, Barback @ your local college bar - Any of these positions is a great stepping stone to getting one of the best jobs you can have in college (see below).  The best bet is to stick to a pub and grill or maybe just the neighborhood bar where a lot of college students go (when they turn 21 of course).  I suggest staying away from big “clubs”, while the volume goes up and there may be more potential to make tips, these places are sometimes more trouble then they are worth.    

1. Bartending - This is one of the best jobs, period.  Although it is not an easy job to walk into (you usually have to work up through the ranks) the payoff is great once you attain it.  The money is usually great for a student.  In fact, the bar I worked at, many of the bartenders were post graduate degree seekers or just decided to postpone their careers because the money is great and it is a lot of fun.  You do have to work very hard and you will have to commit your weekends and holidays if you want to keep your job but the upside is worth it.                 

It is very hard to plan for a second/new career when you get stuck working all of the time in your current career.  I mean when am I supposed to find time to figure out what kind of new boss I want when my current boss makes me work 65 hours a week.  It reminds me of a story my brother told me about one of his co-workers surfing monster.com when his boss walks into his office and catches him.  The boss sees what he’s doing and tells him “nobody is going to hire you, I even regret hiring you”  

I used to have a lot of interests and thought I would have a million things to write about but in the 7 years since graduating college I have apparently whittled my broad horizons down to 1 thing: My job.  OK I am probably being a little dramatic here but I suppose where I am going with this is that I don’t even know what interests me anymore.  I certainly don’t want to write about how much I hate working (doesn’t everybody) and I don’t want to write about going home from work, eating dinner, and going to bed.  So, until further notice this blog may be a bunch a random thoughts.  I’m not even sure I should have categories on my page.  

 Winner this round: Work

Work 1 - New Life 0    

I have been reading a lot recently about working smarter(meaning less). I really don’t mind working or putting in the hours but flexibility has become a big priority for me with a new child in the house. I also have my parents and extended family all living on the east coast while we and my wife’s family lives in the West. It has become very important for me to figure out a way to have more flexibility in my career.

In my research, many books and articles suggest taking your current career and try to set up a work from home situation starting with 1 day a week and build on that until you work exclusively from home except maybe meetings or something else. It has not taken me long to realize that my current job will not allow this. One of my main functions is to be at a jobsite and analyze field problems that arise all day long. So from sunup to sundown I need to be available to workers to research and solve problems as they arise. These interruptions mean that none of my work (scheduling, billing, productivity tracking, etc.) gets done during the day. So, I come in extra early and leave pretty late to get my work done. Some articles will suggest not allowing interruptions or setting a block of time each day to tackle these issues but in my situation, unfortunately, productivity goes to zero until solutions can be found. I guess I could go on and on about other daily problems but the main point is too many hours daily(and some Saturdays too), very little vacation time, and a lot of stressful situations make my current situation the complete opposite of what I need.

My work situation is 100% my own fault. I recognized the shortcomings of this career path very soon after I started. Unfortunately, one of my greatest strengths (my father always called it stick-tuitivness) is at the same time my biggest weakness. Once I start something I can’t stop until it is done. I have discussed a career change with my wife for 6 years now, but it was always “after the next job” or “maybe this new company will be different”. Now, with my third company I realise that not only do I not want my job but I do not want my bosses job either. It is more stressful and just as many hours.

The fact of the matter is though, I am scared to death of quitting mostly because there are so many unknown’s. I talked my wife into starting her own business 2 years ago and I was such a pillar when she did it. I acted like it was a no-brainer and told her she was crazy if she didn’t do it. I really had to talk her into doing it through many conversations and challenging her every fear (insurance, benefits, steady paycheck, possibility of failure, etc.) with a solid and easy answer. She did start the business finally and it was the best thing she ever did. Today, she is turning down work left and right because she doesn’t want to get any bigger and she only wants to work 20 - 30 hours a week. She works half as much as me and makes more money than I do. But the best part about it is that she can do her work from anywhere in the world thanks to modern technology. Unfortunately, my job prevents us from ever going anywhere.

So, why was it so easy for me to insist a change was the best thing for her to do but still have doubt that I will ever get out of my situation. The reason is, I was an outside observer and saw the path to her success while she was looking at the hurdles in front of her. I cannot see my path because for every good idea I have I can think of ten reasons why it may not work. As an outside observer it was easy for me to see that my wifes bosses and co-workers all thought she was very good at her job. So, being in a service based business (accounting) it only makes sense to break the shackles and earn double to triple your hourly wage on your own schedule for doing the exact same work. Obviously, with something like accounting you need to work for someone else and excel at your job first before you can do something like this but the point is: It doesn’t take 40 years of working 10 hour days to be able to have the freedom to enjoy your life.

So, now knowing that I can’t start a new career without the assistance of an outside observer, I have enlisted my wife to assist with the project. We are dedicated to finding a career that offers me the ability to work from anywhere and have a schedule that I control. I have asked her to think about what she thinks I am good at and think of alternative careers that might suit my/our criteria and goals. So far she has come up with one idea: to work for her. For some reason she must think I listen to her well. Needless to say, finding a new career may take a while but I am now 100% committed to it.

OK, while I am still trying to learn how to create the proper layout on this site I think I need to move on to posting about the topics I care about and hope I can re-organize the posts later down the line. One of the topics I will be trying to track is my progress toward running my second half marathon. While I think my ultimate goal is to run one full marathon in my life, I want to try a run another half marathon as I was not prepared for my first and really need to work on a better time. So, next week I will post my training program and write a little each week on how I am progressing. But this week I will tell of my first experience.

History of my First Half Marathon

I ran my first half marathon in about 2 hours and 27 mins (11:22 per mile). This time is not good but I was really happy to finish. Finishing the race was my goal and to be honest I was worried that my time would be far worse than this. My brother talked me into running my first half marathon as he must have seen how lazy and out of shape I had become since graduating from college. At first of course I was reluctant and tried to think of reasons to say no. In the six years post college I had packed on close to 60 lbs. I was (and still am) working a high stress job and working close to 60 hours per week. It is easy to use this as an excuse to not be active and believe me I had almost zero ambition. While my mind was always swirling with ideas on how to better my life I could never get my body to follow. Then it happened! Over the 2006 July 4th weekend my wife gave me the greatest news of my life. She was pregnant. After the initial buzz wore off I felt I needed to start taking care of myself. While a doctor or two had recommended I lose weight and lower my blood pressure It took something like this to really get me to take notice of the mental and physical shape I was in. So I picked what was, to me, the easier of the two to fix first, my health. I decided to take my brother up on his offer (he would run the full and me the half) and to run the half marathon.

I am no stranger to physical activity. I played a lot of sports through high school and a little at the college level. I can’t say I was ever into running for running sake but I, of course, ran as normal training for the sports I played. But the gravity of how far I had let myself go was not apparent to me until I tried to run a mile the day after I decided to start training (late July ‘06). I guess I had noticed from time to time being a little out of breath when doing things like cleaning up after the dog or cleaning around the house but these things are easily dismissed as fixable (sometime later of course) and then forgotten. After this run I decided that the first step was to lose a few pounds at the gym doing cardio excercises. But first I needed to weigh in, I knew what was coming…275 lbs….ouch! I knew that’s what I weighed but now I had to actually write it on a piece of paper in the light of day. I am 6?3? and when i graduated in 2000 I weighed around 215 or so. I wouldn’t say I was lean and mean but I looked good given my large frame. Oh well, I didn’t want to get depressed so I just said to myself that it would all be different come January when i ran that first half marathon.

I worked out at the YMCA 3 times a week for the next several weeks riding the stationary bike for at least 30 minutes at different degrees of difficulty. While the lbs weren’t flying off I lost a couple of pounds and felt that I was getting a little wind back in my lungs. I started doing research on the web for training tips for when I actually started running. I found a couple of good sources at www.halhigdon.com and also at www.jeffgalloway.com Both had good articles and training programs for begginer’s for all distances 5K, 10K, 1/2 and full marathons. After reading through these sites I thought I really needed to get running so i tried again and once again I struggled greatly and was very sore the next day. I don’t think my body was ready for this. I decided to go back to the Y but made it 5 days and week and rode the crap out of that bike. By mid September I was down to 266 and by early October I was down to 263. Modest results but enough to keep me going. But while I was doing a lot of cardio I had yet to really establish a running routine. I went for walks a couple of times a week and tried to run at least once a week. But it was getting easier to find an excuse to skip a workout here or there as it really was very difficult.

So, I decided to get serious. I actually went online, registered, and paid for the race. But more importantly I called my brother and let him know I did it. By doing this he went and registered and bought his plane ticket (he lives on the east coast, me in the west). I was locked in now. This was an important step (actually committing). I really hit it hard and rarely missed a workout. I used a routine from hal higdon that I modified a little to fit my schedule. I really did well only getting slightly off track around the holidays. On race day I was really excited but also nervous. I knew I had not trained for very long and despite following my routine well I still was slow over longer distances and had not run any longer than 10 miles (3.1 miles less than the race). But I said to myself that no matter what I would finish even if I had to walk. So once the race started i just ran and ran only stopping to walk through the water stations. I did not run fast, I stayed within my pace but was surprised at how much all of the other runner’s and spectator’s keep you going. When it was all done, I felt numb but it was great. I was happy with my time all things considered. But the two most important thing that finishing the race gave me was a remembrance of what it was like to achieve a goal (something I haden’t done since graduating) and the fact that I could accomplish things in spite of my life-sucking job.

OK I figured out how to change my theme. It was easy to figure out once I re-read my new account email sent by www.thegeniustree.com that was sent when I signed up with them. I used their recommendation and downloaded smart ftp @ http://smartftp.com , installed it, and when I opened it up to use it, it was really simple. I didn’t spend much time searching for a skin http://themes.wordpress.net I just picked one that looked pretty sharp (I thought) just to try it out. Upon picking the theme I followed the instructions from http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes using the cpanel instructions and opened the file for my theme (leave it zipped) in the transfer box on smartftp. Note: once you click “add” on the transfer screen and it brings it in but you won’t see the file on this tab so click on the temporary queue tab at the bottom and the file will be there. From here just highlight the file and bring it over to the transfer queue(the way I did it was to try and drag the file to the destination folder in the top box and it just moved over to the transfer queue). Once the file appears in the transfer box click the arrow icon to upload the file (make sure you have the correct destination folder open in the top box (cPanel box) In my case it was the Public_HTML/content/themes folder). You will not immediately see it in the top box on smartftp. To ensure everything worked just refresh the ftp screen and you will now see it. I just continued following the instructions at wordpress (link above) and now I have my theme.

I was looking around my cPanel and noticed there was an upload button. I wonder if I could just upload from here? I will give it a shot because this might eliminate some steps, I think. If I have any succes I will post it. Otherwise, this is how I will upload everything from here on out.