It is necessary and beneficial for all college students to have employment experience before they graduate.
Students who wait until after graduation to find their first employment opportunity lack the basic knowledge of how a workplace operates and how coworkers interact with each other. This ignorance can only be detrimental to a recent graduate’s productivity as they would be wholly unprepared for the reality of the workplace, setting them far behind their more experienced peers.
The experience gained during employment is deeper than just work-related information. Even entry-level positions at fast food restaurants offer valuable experience that can be applied to any future career.
Being employed forces responsibilities on a person that they may have never dealt with before, but they will surely deal with in the future. Some of these responsibilities are arriving on time, following instructions, dealing with customers and behaving appropriately in the workplace. Without proper experience of handling these responsibilities, a recent graduate would be so far behind the workplace learning-curve that they would be almost unemployable.
In fact, it is shocking that so many students have entered college without any amount of prior work experience. It would be safe to assume that the main goal of many 16-year-olds is to find a job and start making their own money as soon as they can. While this desire to start working may be rooted in the childish and stereotypical behavior of teenage rebellion, high school students who are employed are actually setting themselves up for future success.
More experience is always beneficial. Therefore, students who have two years of work experience under their belt before going to college are far more prepared for both the workplace and the classroom.
Handling the responsibilities required by any job creates a strong work ethic. This is because people often treat matters that have a monetary element with much more respect and sincerity. For example, a student who may procrastinate and goof-off when it comes to schoolwork would behave professionally in the workplace, because earning money is a concept that everyone can understand and adapt around.
Building a strong work ethic is essential, as it can be applied to almost any other aspect of life, including schoolwork.
With over 38,000 students attending Texas State each semester, it can be understandably difficult to find a decent working situation in San Marcos. The job market is simply over-saturated with eager students, desperate for any job paying even slightly above minimum wage.
This is why working for a mobile delivery service, such as DoorDash or Favor, has become a popular source of income for many Texas State students. The demand, flexibility, and relative-ease of working for the service is understandably attractive to college students and has widely become the sole source of income for many of them. While working for these services is a completely legitimate way of making money, the services’ hands-off and “self-employed” structure is not conducive to building a strong work ethic and gaining useful experience.
Although having a low-stress and responsibility-free job may sound attractive, it is stressful situations and mandatory responsibilities enforced by employment that build a strong work ethic and give useful experience.
Students should be striving for an opportunity to expand their employment options, but turning toward mobile delivery services as that option is not going to provide any useful outcome. They should make an earnest attempt at finding a place of work that will benefit them in the long run.
Having a solid work ethic is essential to being an effective worker, and therefore a priceless skill to have when searching for jobs after graduation. Due to this reality, it is irrefutably necessary and beneficial to have prior employment experience before college graduation.
-Thomas Dunlap is a journalism senior