Should I be a Stripper a Drug Dealer or a T-shirt Vendor?
Jan 22 '01
The Bottom Line Try to find a job which allows you to get your school work done and to have an active social life.
Balancing a part time job with college can be quite a challenge. Unless you come from a wealthy family, you'll need to earn some money, but at the same time you don't want to leave yourself with no time to study or to have a social life. Therefore, you essentially have two options: take a job which allows you to do school work on the job or find a job that will earn you a lot of money without having to work long hours. When I was at Penn State in the early 1990's, my college girlfriend took the first option, while I opted for the later. Whatever you do, you do not want a job which requires a lot of hard work for little pay.
JOBS TO AVOID
I highly suggest avoiding most service industry jobs like the plague! If you are working in fast food, or a diner, you will do lots of hard work for little pay. As I learned in high school, the grease in a fast food kitchen hangs so heavily in the air that it will literally clog your pores and leave your face covered in zits. You also have little control over your work schedule. If you want to go to the big party on Saturday night, there is a good chance you'll be penciled in to work, and no one wants to trade shifts to work on a Saturday night.
Working as a waiter or waitress in a nice restaurant is a much better option, because the pay and working conditions are generally better. Also, jobs in retail or telemarketing are a step above fast food. However, at all of these jobs, you have to deal with rude people and are working the whole time and have no time to do school work on the job.
A BETTER OPTION: AN EASY JOB WHERE YOU CAN DO SCHOOL WORK
Believe it or not, there are many jobs for students which are so easy that you can spend most of the time doing your homework while also collecting a paycheck. A lot of these are work study jobs. For example, my college girlfriend worked the mail room of a dorm. All she had to do was hand out packages too big to fit in mail boxes, give spare keys to people who lost their dorm room keys and make sure no drunk testosterone filled monkey boys trashed the common area. She got paid the same amount as the poor saps who worked their tails off in the dining halls, but she basically could just do homework, talk on the phone or watch the big screen TV in the lobby. Sure, it was an easy job, but she did not have control over her work schedule and the pay wasn't much more than minimum wage. Therefore, I think the next option is even better.
THE BEST OPTION: A JOB WHERE YOU MAKE YOU MAKE A LOT OF MONEY WORKING A FEW HOURS A WEEK
There are actually various part time jobs which provide a lot of bang for the buck, some of which I would recommend, others which I would not. First of all, you could sell drugs. Unfortunately, very few people actually make any money selling drugs. The advantage to selling drugs is you will suddenly have lots of new "friends" and girls who would have never given you the time of day are now all over you. Unfortunately, the only way to make any significant profit is to sell a lot of drugs, and the more you sell, the greater your chance of getting caught. Thus, you can strike drug dealing as a viable option, even though it might seem like easy money.
A legal alternative to drug dealing is working as a stripper. I have lots of female friends, an x-girlfriend and even one male friend who have worked as strippers at some point in their lives and my best friend used to manage a strip-club. Therefore, I know a thing or two about the business, even though I've never been a stripper myself. Of course, not everyone has what it takes to be a successful stripper. You need to have the body, the moves and the right attitude. The best looking girls do not necessarily make the most money. What is more important than looks is the girl's attitude. A mildly attractive girl who is always smiling and knows how to flirt with the guys will usually make more money than a drop-dead gorgeous girl who always has a scow on her face and acts like she has no desire to be working as a stripper.
One thing my stripper friends have consistently told me is that the general rule is the more repulsive the guy, the deeper his pocket. Fat, bald older men will drop hundreds of dollars in a night on strippers they have no chance in hell of ever hooking up with, while young, good looking guys will generally never give them anything more than a five dollar bill. The same rule seems to apply to male strippers as well. One time I went to a private party with my male stripper friend. I was wondering how a guy could not get aroused dancing in front of a bunch of screaming women fondling his body. Well, I got my answer that night. These women were all overweight, trashy and skanky, but were shelling out the dough!
If you have the right combination of looks and personality and don't mind grinding on disgusting people as old as your parents, you can make anywhere from $200 to $1,000 a shift depending on the club and the day of the week. The money is good, but most strippers I know eventually get burnt out by the nature of the job.
If you don't have what it takes to be a stripper, but want to make big money in a short period of time, you can sell t-shirts like I did in college. At first, I started working for an upper-classmen who had a t-shirt business. We would go door to door selling shirts which usually had the words "Penn State" along with some type of alcohol. For example, we had "Penn State Absolut," "Penn State Budweiser," and "Penn State Rolling Rock" shirts. We also had shirts with "Calvin and Hobbs", "Bevis and Butthead" and "Where the Wild Things Are." These shirts were really easy to sell, especially on football weekends or during the Arts Festival, when lots of people would be visiting from out of town. I made a commission of $3 a shirt and could make $100 in 3 hours on a good night. Sure, $100 doesn't seem like much to me as an adult, but as a college student, $100 was big money! When other students were making $5.25 an hour, I was making $30 and hour. I also had complete control over when I worked as well.
Although selling t-shirts can be profitable, you should be aware of any local solicitation laws. One night, I was making a killing selling shirts in the dorms, when I was suddenly handcuffed by two women. Now, normally, I wouldn't mind having two women slap handcuffs on me, but these were University police officers arresting me for trespassing in the dorms. To make a long story short, they did not press criminal charges because I was a Penn State student. Instead, I was placed on three semesters of disciplinary probation. After that incident, I stuck to selling shirts in the downtown apartments.
Whatever job you end up working in college, just make sure you have plenty of time to study. Remember, you're in college so you won't have to work a menial job for the rest of your life.
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Epinions.com ID:
Nilo24
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Member: Matt
Location: State College, PA
Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 15 members
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