How to Obtain a Working Student Position

The college or university student who hopes to obtain some cash by finding a working student position must make clear to the financial office his or her needs. The men and women at the financial office are familiar with the work-study programs at the institution where they are employed. They know all the ins and outs of the process that should be followed by someone looking for a working student position.

Alumni, who have had experience with filling a working student position, know that such positions offer the student a broad range of experiences. Work study programs allow the students to develop all sorts of skills. The responsibilities of the student who takes on a working student position could include any number of tasks.

Sometimes the job description for a working student position incorporates the very simplest of tasks. For example a working student position might call for a student to wash glassware in a laboratory. That would not be a very educational experience, but perhaps it could lead to more challenging responsibilities. It might lead to a job preparing some of the simpler lab solutions.

When a working student position provides a student with skills he or she did not learn in class, then that position offers more than money. Such a working student position would give a student added background experience. Such experience then often leads to a better-paying entry job upon graduation.

Sometimes, too, a working student position might give a student the sort of experience that would provide many hours of conversational value. It might be the sort of experience that the student would later want to share with family members, especially young children. As an example, let’s take a look at a working student position that became available in the early 1970s at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

At that time a geology professor needed a student to run the movie reel during his class. This was before the introduction of video. The professor spoke with people in the financial office, and he also spoke with a student who was on the lookout for a working student position. That student, like all of the students at Mount Holyoke College, was a female student. Yet she was not the sort of female who shied away from dealing with technology.

That student agreed to take that new working student position. While in that working student position, that girl, who was an anthropology major, discovered that the wife of the geologist was doing graduate work in anthropology. Eventually the student in the working student position became an important resource for that graduate student and wife.

The student in the working student position was the president of a small campus club. The geologist’s wife decided to make a study of the club members. The geologist and his wife invited the student in the working student position for dinner, and they invited other club members as well. The wife and graduate student then did a paper based on the club led by the student in the working student position.