Forget the car park blues ...

I glance out of my office window at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) to an almost empty car park. The students are on holiday and the bulk of our academic and support staff are too.

Just as I start to suffer from the “car park blues” and feel sorry for myself with the resentment rising within because they are relaxing while I am still beavering away, I remember …

I remember that I have a job. I am employed.

I have somewhere to go each day and a means of earning a living.

I am fortunate.

I am especially fortunate in South Africa with its official unemployment figure of 25.5% (unofficially, it’s put at over 30%) – which equates to about 5.2 million South Africans without a job, according to StatsSA.

I also remember that I am naive in believing that all 27 000 of our students are relaxing. Few can afford the luxury of a two-month lay-off from a financial perspective. Many of them have to work to supplement the cost of obtaining a tertiary qualification.

As a former lecturer, I once had a student who went overseas every end-of-year break to work on building sites in the United Kingdom so that he could pay for the following year’s tuition fees.

Apart from the financial benefits for students who work in the holidays, there’s another – perhaps more important reason – that students should seek holiday employment during their study years. It just makes them more marketable. It gives them the edge when it comes to entering the workplace for real.

And it’s not just me saying that. Research by Adcorp in 2012 shows that those who take up internships are 30% more successful in finding longer-term placements than those who have had no previous work experience.

Doing holiday jobs gives you more than just financial rewards

I know I have an internship to thank for my first job as a young reporter at the Herald. I worked there every holiday. Perhaps it is simply a case of better the devil you know than the unknown student who sends in his CV. Whatever the reason, I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity I had to practice my future trade and be assured I had chosen the right career. 

But holiday jobs need not be within our chosen field because all work has something to teach us in terms of discipline, commitment, being prompt, being polite, perseverance and interacting with people.

If students find themselves scrubbing dishes, serving people, handing out flyers, inputting information, answering telephones or whatever it is, it also shows a certain willingness (though sadly, there appears to be a growing movement among young people to think they are above certain forms of work – see Catherine Wijnberg’s excellent article: http://ow.ly/G1wr0) and this is to be commended.

Remember the student who worked on the building sites in the British mid-winter. Such work not only paid his fees, it made him appreciative of the fact that he needed a qualification if he did not want to be labourer for the rest of his life.

But it also gave him a head start when it came to permanent employment – his employers recognized his work ethic and his ability to work with people from all works of life (a must for a journalist). Today he travels the world for a top sports media group.

So if you are working student reading this, laugh off your form of the “car park blues” because you have given yourself a head start in the job market – one in which 600 000 graduates in South Africa also find themselves permanently unemployed.

Take advantage of such opportunities to bolster your CV and supplement your study fees