15 May 2013 Anneli Fogt 8485 Garden St. Alta Loma, CA 91701 (909) 831-7022 aafogt@csupomona.

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1519 words

Getting the Most out of your Summer Job The tap-tap-tap of your fingers on the cash register keys is nearly drowned out by the chatter of hundreds of excited tourists who are coming to see the unspoiled natural beauty of the national park found on just the other side of the huge picture windows. You realize that the beauty they are all excited about is your backyard for the next few months and smile to yourself as you greet the sunburned and eager face of the next souvenir-laden tourist. As you frantically searched for a summer job last month, scouring the Internet, newspapers and local businesses, you could not see yourself finding any job. A job in a national park was surely the furthest thing from your mind. Luckily, in your tireless searching, you stumbled upon CoolWorks.com. Suddenly, hundreds of doors were opened. National and state parks from across the nation were begging for employees to work in the lodges during the summer tourist season. Eagerly, you filled out applications to places that appealed to you and could not wait to hear back. To your surprise, the application process was the quickest and easiest you have witnessed and, within a few weeks, you were packing your bags for an adventureand a job. CoolWorks.com is an online job placement service that handles hiring for the countrys state and national parks. It operates under the motto, Jobs in great places and, for the past 16 -MORE-

Summer Jobs 5/15/2013 years, it has placed thousands of people in jobs around the country: allowing them to work and live in remote and unspoiled corners of the country. On CoolWorks.com, jobs can be searched for by season and location. A winter job at a ski resort in Colorado, a summer job in the redwoods on the California coast or a year-round job in upstate New York are all possible with a quick search. The most common seasonal jobs are summer jobs due to the large number of students looking to make quick money in their free time. On CoolWorks.com, applying for summer jobs starts as early as January and can run well into June, July or even August. Seasonal work offers flexibility, there are no concrete, long-term commitments. Applicants outline the dates they are available and are hired for those dates. This flexibility makes these summer jobs ideal for college students who have strict schedules, but want to work. The quickness of the hiring process also makes seasonal employment attractive. The waiting game and check-up calls do not exist in the world of seasonal employment: help is needed, and it's needed fast. Tourists from around the world flock to national parks from May to September. They fill up the lodges, hiking trails and restaurants and need to be served. That is where seasonal employees make their grand entrance. Sebastian Kirchoff, a 20-year-old from Los Angeles, Calif., found a summer job in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington on CoolWorks.com. He wanted a summer job in a national park to get away from the craziness of the city. Within days of completing an application, he was hired. -MORE-

Summer Jobs 5/15/2013 I know when I got hired, it wasthe next three days after I filled out an application, says Kirchoff. [The Human Resources Manager] called me andasked me a few questions and [said], 'You're hired, I'll send you the paperwork in an email. It's really easy. It's actually good for people who have little or no job experience. Kaylin Aponte, a 20-year-old college student from Bellingham, Wash. attends Western Washington University. She was also looking for a summer job. She had no work experience and was looking for a first job that would fit into the dates of her summer break and give her relevant experience in the workplace. Like Kirchoff, she found a job at Mount Rainier National Park on CoolWorks.com and applied in January. She was informed she would work there during the summer season within three weeks. She got the experience of a first job in an environment that was less stressful than any typical summer job. Well, I knew that I wanted a summer job that kind of had its own ending, where I didn't really have to worry about leaving [early]. Like they would say, 'okay, we're done' and I could go on my way now, says Aponte.I wanted to be somewhere kind of different, not like McDonalds or somewhere boring like thatWorking on the mountain was a really good environmentto build confidence because everyone's so laid back and it's not like you're in an office or something where it'sreally stressful, where a lot is riding on you. The people are just really great andyou got to meet a bunch of really cool people from all over the world and talk to them. -MORE-

Summer Jobs 5/15/2013 While seasonal employment offers a quick and easy way to get a job, it also offers the obvious perk of spending months at a time in a place that people pay to visit. Most national park jobs offered on CoolWorks.com provide room and board for their employees. Housing is dormstyle or apartment style living. A weekly deduction of $35 to $60 is taken out of your paycheck for housing. Food is either provided for another small deduction of around $50 or bought and prepared by employees in a common kitchen in the employee housing. This nature of living and working together with a group of people over the course of months causes strong bonds to be formed between employees. Aponte's experiences at Mount Rainier National Park speak to this interconnectedness that comes out of seasonal work where co-workers and supervisors become family. It was nice because...we all got up there at the same time and so we were all getting to know each other at the same time, says Aponte. We got to know each other really well and became like a family and that was really a great experience to have. Because of the secluded locations of national parks, cities and towns are usually hours away. Life happens at a slower pace and everyday goals are focused less on speed and productivity, and more on the experience. Connections are forged not only with those that you work with, but with the place itself. Keegan O'Rourke is a 24-year-old from Seattle, Wash. who worked in Mount Rainier National Park for the first time in 2008. He has gone back every summer since then. For me, the sense of the place, that's really a powerful thing that's developed in me after -MORE-

Summer Jobs 5/15/2013 working [in Mount Rainier] for three years, says O'Rourke. I've found that it's really compounded my appreciation for the park itself, the more I've come back...At the end of my third summer I really felt like...it was a place that I had a lot more of a connection to, starting to get to know certain parts of it pretty well and it meant more to me. So, I think this applies even the first time you go...even after the first summer. Suddenly Mount Rainier did mean something more to me. Living anywhere will change what that place means to you. I think that's one of the main things I've taken away from it, is that appreciation for the place. I've taken a lot away from it definitely. For those who are up for the challenge of leaving behind their urban lifestyle, the chance to live in a national park for a few months promises self-discovery and connections with nature: connections that might be hard to break. Sam Sanborn is a 25-year-old from Portland, Oregon who has never been able to break the connection with nature that national park jobs offer. Sanborn has worked in 11 state and national parks since 2010 in places such as Bryce Canyon, Utah; Yosemite, Calif.; Hawaii and Florida. He got into seasonal employment after he graduated college and realized that he was unhappy with his normal cubicle job. I had this pretty swell job...and I freaked out one day...and I quit my job and I was thinking, I mean, I want to get out of this town, says Sanborn. So, I looked online and started doing my own search... And I found this one forum...[about] seasonal work... From there, I was just...looking into national parks and...I looked at the Mount Rainier National Park website and -MORE-

Summer Jobs 5/15/2013 that's where it started. Since that first job in Mount Rainier in 2010, Sanborn has come to love the community and camaraderie that seasonal work provides. This keeps him going back to seasonal work year after year. It's all the process, and I think the people that do seasonal work, myself very much included, we're those people that seek out the boundaries of existence, says Sanborn. We look for the most remote place, the most extreme place to live and still make a living...you look for that and you look to define yourself. You look to finally find out those answers to all the questions you've had in your mind since infancy. That's what you're doing, and that's what everybody's doing and that's why everybody gets along. It's because, deep-down, you know that that's what everybody's there for. ###

Source List and Bibliography Sebastian Kirchoff: (503) 896-7251 Keegan O'' Rourke: (206) 856-2828 Kaylin Aponte:(253) 678-6369 Sam Sanborn: (503) 250-3490

Coolworks.com. (2013, May 13). Retrieved from http://www.coolworks.com/about/about-

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