It seems so easy to think about it. But if you’ve ever tried it, a part-time job during high school can be terrible burden. That’s so especially considering how a high school student doesn’t just need to balance work and school. There is also home life and life with friends to work into the mix. Nevertheless, part-time jobs for high school students do tend to work out in many cases.
It can be tough – waking up at half past four to go on your paper route, to man the counter at McDonald’s, to babysit and so on. Even if all of this brings you barely anything at all, it has the ability to teach a child a great deal about how money comes in how you get to stay.
Some parents are often tempted to just tell their teenagers that they shouldn’t have to live a life of so much stress. They feel that if they could only take care of all the money problems, their child could spend all that time on his books rather than at some low-paying job. Others feel that these can be valuable learning experiences.
Perhaps, the answer lies somewhere in between. The problem with schoolwork is that there is no immediate feedback. You can’t study and see the results right away to see that you’ve been using your time well. As a job, you can set. If you don’t work well, you get your bosses anger. That’s kind of a very good thing to help your child understand the value of time and work with.
So part-time jobs for high school students can be a very good idea if they learn to do it in moderation – just a few hours a day to help them learn the work ethic. And anyway, universities do look for work experience on college applications. So this should work out very well all around. In fact, they could actually start their own business. This looks very good on a college application. And it doesn’t feel demeaning no matter what you doing, if it’s your own business.
For instance, get your child to get a CPR course at the Red Cross. This would make her a great babysitter who could demand $15 an hour. If she could band 10 friends together, she could start her own business.
There is this New York Times story When the Tech Guy is 12 or even 10 about how 10-year-olds these days have a great web design skills that they can use to design websites for big money. How big, you ask? How about $2000 a job? Since young people have such interested in anything to do with Internet these days, these kinds of work make for great part-time jobs for high school students.
Photo by merfam 
