Despite the copious amount of time school takes up, several Upper School students have found time for a job in order to gain experience and earn money.

Taylor Mahal (12) has worked as a lifeguard at the pool in her neighborhood for the past two summers. She received the job after 28 hours of training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED).

“I wanted to get a job because I wanted to make my own money. At the same time, where I was going to do it was at a place where I knew people, I had friends, and other friends were going to be working with me,” she said. “It was just a good atmosphere.”

Taylor enjoys many aspects of lifeguarding such as blasting music while she and the other lifeguards clean up for the day, but there are also scary parts to the job.

“My scariest experience was when there was a woman having a stroke. We didn’t know until her daughter came over and told us that she was calling 911. We had to secure the area and make sure that people were giving her space so that we could do our job with her,” Taylor said. “We basically had to ask all the routine questions like ‘can you feel your right arm,’ ‘can you feel your left arm,’ ‘what’s your name,’ ‘are you diabetic.’ In the end she turned out to be okay. It was a big deal, but we had to make sure that everyone stayed calm.”

In addition to summer time jobs, several seniors decided to add a job to their workload now in the second semester. Monica Thukral (12) recently began her job at Abercrombie Kids.

“I decided to get a job because it’s the second semester of senior year, so I’ve finished college applications,” she said. “I also wasn’t swimming this year so I had extra time and just to make money to spend to hang out with people.”

Because she is new to the job, she does not have the opportunity to choose her shifts.

“I have random ones,” Monica said. “That’s kind of annoying, but it’s also kind of good to have a really, really part time job. It worked out to my advantage.”

Monica, like other student employees who come into direct contact with customers, must follow the guidelines for personal appearance.

“They give you a booklet where you can choose the outfits that they recommend and you can buy those, but I get a discount,” she said. “The only makeup I can wear is like foundation and mascara, and I can’t wear nail polish which is making me crazy because I love red nail polish.”

Navsher Singh (11) currently has a paid internship at Ampush, a social technology company that, according to him, “helps clients execute and manage large scale advertising campaigns on Facebook.” He began his work over President’s Week break and will continue over the summer.

“So far, I’ve worked on small stuff like client invoicing and an intern budgeting project,” he said. “The experience has been great so far. It’s definitely a lot of work, but I love the atmosphere and all the great people there.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on March 12, 2014.