The campus minimum wage is $7.75 dollars per hour, Student Employment Office consultant Kari Jo Grant said. However, most student workers often make more than that, and have several opportunities to increase their salaries. The Student Employment Office provides guidelines for how departments should construct their pay scale, incorporating skill level, scope and difficulty of the decisions. The office also recommends offering higher pay for working unpopular shifts and increasing wages and shift preferences the longer a student works with a department. Those who work DDS jobs certainly reap these benefits.
"As you work at Novack, every term you're here you get a 25-cent raise," lead counter worker Erin Clark said. And "if you're on the bottom of [the seniority ladder] you might not necessarily get the shifts you want or you're going to end up on those late night shifts," Clark said.
Still, even working the less desirable shifts can have incentives.
"For those hours when it's more difficult to get students to work, like late at night, we have a shift differential so they actually make a little bit more," access services librarian Lynn Amber said.
Jobs that enable students to do homework during their shifts or make their own hours are especially appealing.
"I decided to work at the library because I knew I could probably do my homework at the information desk while working," Peter Hill '13 said.
Jennifer Gargano '14, who holds four jobs, said she appreciates that her commitments enable her to work whenever her schedule allows.
"For the two programs I do through Tucker, you can design your own hours, which is nice because I can do my work late at night or on the weekends," Gargano said.
Other jobs are deceptively less conducive to doing homework than they might seem.
"For jobs like Novack, a lot of times you think you'll be able to do your own work, but then you don't end up being productive," Gargano said.
Jobs provide a daily structure for students who feel they get less done when their days don't contain any set activities.
"I feel like the less free time I have, the better I am with organizing my time," said Tanya Budler '15, who works at the Co-op apparel store, the Tucker Foundation and the history department. "Also, going to the Co-op for half a day reminds me of the real world and gets me out of the Dartmouth bubble, even if it is so close."
Grant echoed this sentiment, saying that a job can provide students with adult mentors away from home.
"Students get to know their supervisors and their coworkers and at least develop relationships that they might not have with professors," she said.
Indeed, simply having another on or off-campus niche is another benefit of being employed, and whether the pay is stellar is another question.
"I do have really awesome times at work and have made great friends there, some of whom aren't Dartmouth students, which is really nice too," Budler said.
Supervisors and peers are often understanding of Dartmouth students' workloads, which makes having a job much easier when midterms and finals come along. Fellow employees are frequently willing to sub for their coworkers, who know they will repay the favor when the situation requires it.
"They've been very accommodating, and I'm not even that worried about balancing work and school because it was my choice to get a job," Audrey McCartney '16 said of J. Crew, where she has worked since its opening.
Budler acknowledges that other off-campus employers are sometimes not as understanding.
"I've heard nightmare stories of off-campus employers not being very flexible, so I'm very lucky," she said.
Working allows students to pay for things on their own and garner the satisfaction that comes along.
"I work because I'm trying to pay for Dartmouth myself. Books and the occasional Starbucks coffee break has to come from my own pocket, so I don't mind putting in the hours for it," Budler said.
Whatever job one works in there were more than 1500 students working in over 330 different positions last fall both the tangible and intangible benefits that come with being employed make nearly any job a student holds worth the commitment.
Staff writer Sara Kassir contributed reporting.
