Remember the old meme about dual shifting for maximum efficiency?
As of late, that old phrase has taken on renewed meaning after taking a job as a line cook to supplement my income and failing to find a position with my lovely decorative liberal arts degree. Days of racing from Karns to campus to Turkey Creek in a rough two hours span have become an anxious cycle of switching from professional personality to caffeine-driven taskmaster as I barrel down I-40 west to the beat of Titus Andronicus or the Atomic Platters box set.
This isn’t the first time the Beacon and a restaurant kitchen have become my mutual benefactors, but as a recent graduate my lack of classes has made the transition somewhat less chaotic, if still frazzling. The ability to juggle two or more jobs while carrying a full class load was daunting but doable, but as a young and able person of limited means, there is no reason why working two jobs should be an imposition.
I’m no corporate apologist or upwardly mobile class warrior on the side of affluence, so to say that young people riding the poverty line should work as much as possible is by no means an endorsement of the idea of prolats as cogs in the big machine. However, I do believe that if you want to get anywhere in life work is the only respectable, and to me acceptable, means of achievement.
The benefits and drawbacks of working multiple jobs are manifold, the biggest of each being the experience and perspective working in two vastly different environments can provide. At the Beacon, we show up at different times during the day to load in stories and edit them, then pass off the assignments for the day to designers to build the paper. Banter and good-natured ribbing goes on through the day, but the atmosphere is nonetheless respectful and professional (well, most of the time anyway). A kitchen, however, can be a frantic mess of unilateral stimuli, requests and orders coming from every angle, and time being of the utmost of importance.
On the positive side, the two salaries help with bills and rent, even leaving a little extra money for those few spare hours when you aren’t plying a trade. The simple acquisition of capital, especially more than you need, isn’t a wonderful focus of monomania, but hard work while you are physically able makes reasonable goals like buying a house or settling down at some point much easier, as opposed to living at stretched means and accruing debt that impedes any further progress you hope to make professionally or personally. Working to put money back, even if it’s just in a slush fund for emergencies, makes sense if you hope to step outside the comfortable bounds of menial jobbing, fast food consuming and trash TV watching.
Even the negatives of working two jobs are negligible in view of the benefits. Having little time for chilling out and getting things done in your personal life can be maddening, but also the scarcity of free time makes you value it and prioritize and eliminate those activities in your life which aren’t necessary. Really the only undeniable downfall of working around the clock is the inevitable energy drain. In my case, sleep comes in fits and starts and a day that starts around 10 in the morning goes until 4 the following, regardless of whether or not I want it to, so nocturnalism has become an unwilling lifestyle.
For those of you already working and balancing your pursuit of a degree, you know the key to keeping it together is positive motivation, keeping your eye on the prize. If you just keep a cool head and figure out what you want and how to get it, the rewards are virtually limitless. With a little work ethic and the various forms of ingesting the coffee bean, you can become an expert in your field of choice and start building the foundation for your post-collegiate life if you want it. I don’t just work out of necessity — the thrill of a news room on the verge of a huge breaking story is a rush, as is dishing out an interminable list of orders on a busy night without screwing anything up. Working not only towards goals, but to remind your body what it was built for, is key to a fulfilling life.
— Jake Lane is a graduate in creative writing. He can be reached at [email protected].
