Extracurricular activities, AP classes and school sports take up a lot of time in a high school student’s life, but when you add a job into the mix, how can anyone get it all done?

A great number of students take summer jobs to earn money for college or for personal use, but not all of them remain at their summer job during the school year. For those who do, it can be difficult to commit to a year-round job when they have so many commitments.

“I get more [students] trying to work during the year,” Robeks manager Hunter Adams said. “About half of them need time off.”

With so many students struggling to find time for a job, having flexibility in one’s work schedule is important.

Junior Joanna Levine worked at the Giant in Cabin John Mall over the summer and played soccer at the same time.

“I had to miss [work] a few times,” Levine said. “[But] the manager was very nice about it.”

Working well with a manager is a key part to being happily employed. Luckily, several companies are used to employing high school students, so it is not a big issue if students have other responsibilities at the same time.
“I had a girl who said she could only work on weekends because she had a bunch of AP classes,” Adams said. “I was more than willing to help her out with that.”

Of course if the manager is not flexible, then it will be harder to get the much-needed time off for other activities.

“[I work at] Easy Spirit shoes at Montgomery Mall two to three [times a week], but I also babysit and have private art classes,” senior Alex Pope said. “My manager is pretty [lenient]- she basically lets me work when I want to.”

Another company who employs high school students, California Tortilla, is also located at Cabin John Mall.

“We have about seven high school students right now,” California Tortilla assistant manager Brian Friend said. “They work about five days a week.”

Although not a lot of their student employees have other extracurricular activities that Friend knows of, California Tortilla strives to work with their employee’s schedules.

“We would definitely try to work with the employee and see what we could do to have them happily employed and still able to enjoy their extracurricular activities,” Friend said.

So for any students on the hunt for a job, here are a couple things to look for in employers: understanding that students have previous obligations, ability to be flexible with work hours and a wish to make it work with their employees. Happy job hunting!