College Breaks and Paychecks: Students Share Their Work Experiences
Emily Cobb | November 1, 2023
As a work college, Warren Wilson College (WWC) has many hiring opportunities over school breaks. This offers students the experience to catch up on academic hours, get cash or paid contracts and try out other crews.
Students can apply to positions through Handshake, and depending on the relationship they have with the crew, and what the crew is, they can either go through an application process or simply be hired.
Gabe Jefferson is majoring in ceramics and is on the Farm Crew. He has worked for the Admissions Crew over summer break, fall break and spring break.
During spring and fall break, students stay on campus in their rooms after getting approval from housing, and are responsible for feeding themselves. Summer students also have to provide their food, however, to receive free housing, students have to work 40 hours a week on campus and apply for housing.
Franny Moseley is majoring in social work and is on the Library Circulation Crew. She had two 20-hour contracts, one on the Admissions Crew and one on the Library Circulation Crew.
With Moseley working at the library and admissions, she spent the first half of her day at the library doing Interlibrary Loan (ILL), cleaning and other duties before moving to admissions and doing tasks there.
“I enjoyed working over the summer, just because I got a chance to have an experience of living on my own,” Moseley said. “It was nice to not have to pay for housing and to not have to go home for the summer. It was also nice to just have a steady payment coming in.”
Both she and Jefferson agreed that housing was a stressful experience for work last summer as the usual housing is in Villages, but because the Villages were undergoing repairs, summer employees were left unsure of where they would be housed and if they would have a roommate. The summer housing ended up being split between Sage and Dorland.
For the Admissions Crew, work typically was of a receptionist such as cleaning up, answering emails and answering the phone, as well as giving tours and filing transcripts.
Jefferson did feel like summer work was tedious at points since the work lasted months, however, he enjoyed his experience and recommended students try it to get the experience of being on their own working at school, and learning to manage their time.
“The biggest benefits were being on this beautiful campus, and having the entire campus to roam freely and kind of do whatever you want whenever,” Jefferson said.
Anna Sauerbrey is on the Farm General Crew and is a sustainable agriculture and creative writing double major. They worked this past fall break on Farm Crew.
For Sauerbrey, work typically consisted of dividing into groups, performing chores, projects and other tasks assigned to them.
“I think it was great experience-wise,” Sauerbrey said. “I had a good time, I learned a lot and I think having that experience is going to be really helpful to me in the future because I have this experience now and I got to do other different things. I think it also helps me a lot with making my decisions for my future on the crew because I got to do all the things that people on Cattle Crew would do. I got to do the things that people on the pig sub crew would do… I improved their [my bosses] opinion of me, I know they trust me more.”
A downside for Sauerbrey was that working over fall break meant no rest in between terms as well as pay issues.
“I think in general, on this campus, we do not get paid a sufficient amount for our labor,” Sauerbrey said. “I did have to provide my own food during that week, and I think I got like $350 for an entire week of very difficult, very skilled time-consuming labor. So do I think it was fair compensation? No. But I do think that honestly, at this point it’s the best the school can do.”
Moseley agreed stating how as she was the sole student employee for the library, the job was very demanding, especially physically. She felt that the pay was lacking for the amount of energy she was putting in.
“It was at times challenging since at the library, I was the sole employee,” Moseley said. “So if there were, you know, tiffs or annoyances it was really hard to address if there was an overflow of work. It was very stressful because I was the only employee that was a student. So I was the only person capable of doing specific things and that was stressful when we were over flooded. As far as Admissions Crew goes, I really loved admissions. I loved meeting people and mingling, there were some challenges because I had had a previous injury so giving tours was a bit of a complication. But after I did physical therapy, that wasn't as hard anymore.”
Despite the downsides, Jefferson, Moseley and Sauerbrey all plan on working over a break again and recommend others do the same.
“I think if your job is something you're interested in, and they have break positions, and you like it and you want to gain a lot of skills in this career or you're thinking about making it like a longer-term thing, I definitely recommend because not only do you build a closer relationship with your supervisors, like a closer trusting working relationship you also just learn so much,” Sauerbrey said.
Moseley agreed.
“I recommend [doing break work] at least once,” Moseley said. “I think it's a fun experience, I had to learn how to budget my groceries and how to budget other expenses because Gladfelter wasn't open. So I couldn't just pop down to Glad whenever I wanted a meal, I had to make my own meals and make sure I had planned for that. It was also nice because now I have more work experience on my resume.”