Employment: The one thing that many teenagers of today have been trying to escape, with some finding pure horror in it. Finding a stable job and working a reasonable number of hours per week, while still leaving time for a social life, academics, extracurriculars, and sleep, is not as easy as it may seem. However, many students find that their jobs provide unique experiences that have positively influenced how they navigate their classrooms, stages, and athletic spaces.

After an injury to his leg, Joe Cloonan (Class III) spent a year as a patient at a physical therapy center, forming strong relationships with the people and place. It was when Cloonan was going back to visit the center one day to thank his therapists that he was offered a job as a physical therapy assistant.

Since accepting the offer, Cloonan considers the new connections he makes to be his favorite aspect of the job. “I like the connections that I build with most of the patients there because the ages really range. There’ll be some ten-year-olds there, and then there’ll also be 80-year-olds there, so it’s just really nice to get different perspectives from different people, and learn more about their lives,” he said. In a typical shift, Cloonan works with three to four patients every hour, maximizing the number of people he sees and helping them obtain the proper equipment needed for their assigned exercises.

Despite having to juggle work, school, and extracurriculars, Cloonan said, “I feel like it’s a good balance. I’ll go to work, come back around 8:15, and then I’ll do my homework.” Aside from the joy he gets from discussing fantasy football with his boss, Ryan, and catching up with his former physical therapist, Mike, the assisting experience has motivated Cloonan’s interest in continuing physical therapy beyond Nobles.

He said, “Being a physical therapist for a professional team could be really interesting.” Not only has he enjoyed the job for its flexibility and the reconnections with people that have had a profound impact on him, but also for the lessons it has taught him in embracing gratitude in all aspects of life. He says, “[My job has taught me to] always be grateful for everything. If I hadn’t gone back and said, ‘Thank you’ to them, they probably wouldn’t have asked me to work there.”

With her keen interest in environmental policy, Emma Finklestein (Class I) had the opportunity to work closely with the environment this past summer at Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. Finklestein’s active role entails writing articles for the environmental newsletter, Blue Dot, which allowed her to interview a Shellfish Constable, whose wife, the Shellfish Group’s director, later helped Finklestein become an employee at the Group.

Every day at work typically entailed something new for Finklestein. She said, “When I first go out there, [I] usually have to clean the tank, and get all the algae out with salt water, and then make sure that everything’s clean. Once you do that, sometimes you have to bundle the baby shellfish to give to the constables.” On other days, it would be collecting oysters and other species to guard them for research. She said, “Other times I would be out on the pond, collecting oysters that are for research. Sometimes I’d be dissecting the oysters, and sometimes we’d go to ponds and look for invasive species.”

Finklestein highlights her appreciation for the rewarding experience of the job. She says, “Just learning how to do new things, and just being completely thrown into it has been really fun.”

Finkelstein’s experience has both prepared her and influenced what she sees herself doing in the future, leading her to spend more time outdoors and to delve deeper into her interest in environmental policy. She says, “I’m really interested in environmental policy, and I love just spending time outside.”

Whether through injuries or interviews, landing a job as a student can be difficult to come by, but it certainly entails meeting impactful people and learning new things about the world around you, your interests, and most importantly, yourself, as both Cloonan and Finklestein found unique job experiences that have positively influenced their perspectives.