Which is the right age to start working? Could it be at the age of fifteen, when most teenagers are starting to work par time jobs at fast food restaurants? I certainly don’t believe so, and is not just because of the age is the fact that teenagers have so many other things in mind like school, relationships, family conflicts, what’s new on fashion and many other things that at this age is kind of hard to deal with all of them at the same time and not go crazy.
As the paragraph in Eric Scholosser, behind the counter pg80 states “ A report on child labor published by the National Academy of Science in 1998, concluded that the long hours many American teenagers now spend on the job pose a great risk to their future educational and financial success.”
Working may be a good thing for teenagers, it helps them increased not just their personal responsibility but their self esteem. But of course it all depends on how many hours they spend at work. It’s really difficult to focus on school when working for certain hours, after coming back from work the only thing in mind is the bed and the guilty thought of not doing the homework. This is one of the many reasons as why teenagers drop out of high school, and lose their minds. Is so much the stress these experience, that they lose interest in school and everything else, sometimes the only thing in their head is getting money.
I personally have experience working at a fast food restaurant (Mc Donald’s) in which I got to lived many of the effects of having a job while being in high school. My schedule was to get up at 6 in the morning get ready and go to school from 7: 45 to 2:30 pm, after I would come home eat something really quick and than go to work from 4 to 11 most of the times. After coming back from work I was so tired that I would just go to bed without even eating, and this was a routine every day. My parents told me many times to stop working but I was so used to getting my check that I wasn’t able to quick. It is really difficult to deal with school, work, relationships at the same time that I used to feel like crying without even having a reason, it was just the stress I had that a couple of times when I just wanted to give everything up. Working a lot of hours can definitely affect teenager’s lives.
I could also relate to your point on how teens loose intrest in school once they start working. When i had my first job at the age of 14 I thought it was the best thing ever, making money. I would leave my hw to work and eventually ended up thinking about dropping out of school. It happens a lot to young teenagers, That point is definitely true.
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel, wheni use to close at my old job i use to get out at 3am the latest on busy nights and the earlest would be 130am, and i think my mom told me the same thing. When i started working it was all about fashion and having what i wanted, but as I noticed i had to start paying my own bills. Even then i was still thinking about working than going to school, you make a good point when it come to teens at work, and in school.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a few of us have walked down that road. Its very true that when your working long hours there is really no interest left to think about school, and much less energy to get school work done. Your response brings me back to when i was closing like around 2 a.m. and then opening at 5 a.m. wouldnt even go to class. wouldve been interesting to have read this blog when i was in high school.
ReplyDeletei rreally like your personal experience in working at a fast food chain. especially when we had to present as a group and you told us all your expiriences and how much work yo do for them and how little they do for you. Its so difficult to find a balance for teens to go to work and school. Even for adults. Since we get paid to work and not to go to school even though both of them are stressing us out, we still choose to get money because that gets us what we want fast.
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