BAHS Students Talk About Summer Jobs

August Napolitano

While Bel Air High School was closed for summer these past nine weeks, many students decided that the season was the perfect time to get their introduction into the workforce. Some wanted a seasonal position just to earn spending money for the break, while others went for long term positions. Whichever way they went, it was certain that these Bobcats would come back to school with many lessons about financial and personal responsibilities learned.

Senior Christian Malek spent the summer working as the primary wire runner at Loyola University. “Loyola had a very complex way of working wires,” Malek explained. “They have about 150 Telecomm closets on campus which are full of these jumbles of switches and routers that they use to run internet throughout the campus. So my job was to make sure every one of the ports on those routers was working. Each of the routers have about 48 ports on them. It was a very stressful job, but I worked very hard.”

Meanwhile, Mary Talbard, a BAHS junior, started a job at Hot Topic in the Harford Mall that she still holds today. “I think every teenager gets to a point where they don’t want to rely on their parents’ money anymore,” Talbard explains. “I wanted be able to have my own and get ready for when I’m an adult. I chose Hot Topic because I’ve been going there for years, and it’s always been my dream teen job, because I really feel like I fit into the atmosphere there.”

Despite the tedious tasks at hand for Malek, he continued his job throughout the summer with the knowledge that he was being paid for his dedication to the work. “When you first start working and you get your first paycheck, there is a myriad of emotions,” he remarks. Although, being new to the world of work, Christian admits he was confused and annoyed by his newfound financial responsibilities. “You can’t just hand a $600 check to a cashier at ShopRite or something,” he says. “I needed to open a bank account, and it took my bank two weeks to mail the card to me. I couldn’t buy anything for two weeks, and the first thing I finally bought was a comforter for my bed. It was stingy, it smelled weird, and it was itchy. I was not happy about wasting my first paycheck on it.”

After everything he endured getting accustomed to his job, Malek says it taught him a lot of things, including the price of disappointing your superiors. “During the last week that I had my job, my boss decided he trusted me enough to lend me a golf cart to drive around the campus so I would be more effective at my job. You had to park it in front of this garage at the end of the day, and the first day I drove it I got too confident and drove it straight into the garage door. My boss was very angry at me, because the door would cost $1000 to repair. I think more than anything, disappointing him was the worst thing I did.”

Mary Talbard also feels that her job at Hot Topic is helping her learn a lot of important life lessons. “I’m still learning, but it’s definitely helping me become more mature and it’s actually really helping me with my social anxiety because I have to approach customers and help them out. It’s really helping me grow as a responsible person,” she admits.

Of course, a teenager making money for the first time has a lot to learn about personal finance. It’s an experience nobody can really prepare you for until you encounter it firsthand.

“Before I started working I didn’t know that much about taxes and stuff. So when I got my first paycheck I thought, ‘why is this so small?’ But I think it’s a good way to brace myself for getting older,” Talbard says, adding, “I also realized how serious it is working with money. I have to be very careful, making sure I don’t give people the wrong change because that could hurt my store.”

Looking back on his experiences this summer, Malek agrees, now realizing how much financial responsibility he has. “What I didn’t understand when I first got paid was that personal finance is both a science and an art. Now that I’ve had a few months of experience with money, I would say that I am the Leonardo Da Vinci of personal finance. I could tell you my exact amount of money in my bank account to the tenth of a penny.”

So whether you were working to occupy yourself for the season, or decided to hold on to your position, it’s obvious that a student’s first summer job changes their outlook on the working world for good.