Two weeks ago, I began a new role as a Lab Assistant for ENGR 211 Statics — and it’s already scored the title of the most rewarding on-campus job in my book. Throughout my time at Stevens, I’ve held a few part-time campus jobs, starting with an extension of my high school lifeguarding career. Lifeguarding here was an adjustment from what I was used to at home. I caught the tail end of the COVID times when only Stevens students were allowed in the pool and mask restrictions had become more lax…but I was paid $6 less per hour than I was used to. In 2021, Stevens lifeguards were paid the (at the time) minimum wage of $12.00 per hour, the standard salary for on-campus jobs, despite requiring an expensive certification that comparable on-campus salaries did not, a phenomenon that has since been remediated.
The expiration of my Red Cross lifeguard certification, the envy of watching my previous managers play Minecraft, and my rise in seniority motivated a job swap to Lifeguard Manager. When I wasn’t testing pH, checking IDs, listening to water temperature complaints, or calling in backup to remove banned residents from the pool, I would spend most of my shift killing two birds with one stone: doing my homework at the poolside. These two aquatics jobs weren’t all that, but they provided me with fun money to go to concerts and dinners with friends and, more importantly, multiple college-experience defining friendships. There is definitely truth to the saying that the more mundane the job, the better the bond with your coworkers. It leaves you with a lot of time to chit chat and bond. I owe multiple of my current friendships (and my involvement in the Stute!) to my first campus job. I can’t say I would be writing this article right now had it not been for meeting Keenan.
While updating my resume for a full-time job interview this week, I removed my lifeguard certification, which felt like closing a chapter of my life. Working as a Lab Assistant is challenging and mentally stimulating in ways lifeguarding never was, which I fully anticipated, but it’s also put me in an unexpectedly reflective and sentimental mood. My first help desk hours last Thursday presented me with a window into the person I was two years ago, as I helped students stumble through engineering fundamentals that now feel as natural to me as the alphabet. My head and heart have grown a lot in the two-year lapse since I took Statics. Before removing the lifeguard certification from my resume, I glanced at the old ID card I had scanned for my first on-campus job application. Despite still owning—and occasionally wearing—the shirt from the photo, it felt like I was looking at a different girl.
I remember the county worker taking my picture and how excited I was to finally be old enough to lifeguard alongside my friends. I tend to be a year younger than the company I keep as a side effect of skipping a grade of elementary school, and these periods of waiting to ‘catch up’ with my friends’ milestones hasn’t escaped me yet. It happened with my lifeguarding certification, my driver’s license, and now once again with waiting to turn 21.
It’s amusing to reflect on the contrast between the excitement captured in that photo and how I feel about finally moving away from lifeguarding towards jobs that I now find more rewarding. I am very grateful for the way things have played out for me, and maybe it’s just my increasingly-developed frontal lobe speaking, but I have a newfound trust that everything is going to turn out okay. A lot of my teenage years were spent semi-blindly trusting others’ advice about what would set me up for a good future, and I now feel like I’m just beginning to truly know myself, have some confidence in my future path, and reap the benefits.
