Many first-year readers of The Durham Tab may feel in a similar position to how I felt this time last year; you have been at Durham for around a month now, Freshers’ Week was monetarily exhaustive on your bank account and you are feeling the financial squeeze due to expensive food shops, college bar crawls, and spontaneous folded pizzas.
This, coupled with winter balls and society dinners looming in the near future – and a thirst to travel in the holidays, is putting pressure on your crippling bank account.
Getting a job in Durham can seem like an impossible challenge: you imagine that there are hundreds of students applying for the same jobs. Businesses are feeling poorer than ever with increases in NI and minimum wage, and you question whether anyone wants to hire students who leave every few months.
Hope for students looking for work
Well, it really is not as dreich as it seems. The old, annoying chestnut which you hear (“just hand in your CV to some bars and cafes”), really could not be closer to the truth. It is exactly what I and many of my friends did who also have jobs.
Many students believe that Indeed, LinkedIn etc. is the way to get jobs. But actually, jobs are only a face-to-face introduction away from you. Yes, I experienced some good rejection therapy, but all it took was one Saturday afternoon and handing my CV into a dozen or so places to end up with a trial shift for the following Monday. Now I have held my job for a year.
For students, the issue with online job advertising websites is that these companies are advertising vacancies and looking for staff who can work all year round and are permanently based in Durham. On the contrary though, there are a handful of businesses which are quieter over the holidays, and it works in their favour to hire a handful of students part-time as we are always here during term time.
Jobs give you structure
Working as a student in a bar or café may feel daunting – serving your drunk friends whilst they are on a night out, seminar leaders coming in and asking you about the seminar that you missed, and imagining that you are going to miss out on loads as a result of working a few times a week. But it really is not as bad as it may seem – you meet new people who are not on your course or in your college, you integrate with non-students, and it relieves the pressure of working loads during holidays. However, importantly it also adds structure to your life.
This newfound structure will serve as an incredible benefit to your life, which you may be short of at the moment. It may seem like an extra commitment which can interfere with a summative or an internship application, but it encourages you to do these things during the “working day” as you know you have work in the evening.
Working as a student reduces financial stress, widens your social circle, and adds structure to your life. So do not presume that getting a job in Durham is too competitive or a burden to your social or academic life. Jobs are not that competitive, you just need to be proactive, print off your CV, and go to small businesses that you know are often only busy during term time and use your newfound job as a tool to provide structure to your uni life.
Featured image via Unsplash.
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