Summer classes have begun, and so has the challenge of paying for them.
Some students use their Florida Bright Futures Scholarships in the Fall and Spring. Bright Futures is offered to high school students in the state who display high ACT and SAT test scores and work a certain number of community service hours.
However, Bright Futures does not cover Summer courses, resulting in students having to find other avenues to pay for tuition, primarily through part-time jobs.
“I usually use my Bright Futures to cover the costs of my books,” Phoebe Nimocks, a UF biomedical engineering junior, said. “I’m in Circuits, so you have to get the textbooks, the 150 dollar circuit board and everything else. I do not have the money (for everything).”
Some students tend to favor the convenience of on-campus jobs, such as Jonathan Kigel, a 21-year-old operations associate at UF’s RecSports and an applied physiology and kinesiology senior.
“You can put specific blocks of time between two-and-a-half to four hours where you can work in a little bit every day and pick up or drop shifts easily,” he said.
Others, like 20-year-old UF criminology and law junior Kenndi Fichtel, think getting an on-campus job isn’t very flexible.
“It’s such a long process of getting hired and in,” Fichtel said. “I feel like you have to know somebody. There’s a lot of students applying for them.”
Sometimes, students work jobs outside the common coffee shop or fast-food restaurant. Kigel was once a nighttime security guard for on-campus housing at UF.
“Those were interesting,” Kigel said, reminiscing about the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shifts. “All you did was: They assigned you an area, you walked around it and made sure all the doors were locked and no suspicious activity was happening.”
Mickey Howard, the associate director of new student and family programs in the Dean of Students Office, said there’s many resources on campus for students to find work in the Summer, such as Field and Fork Pantry.
“I think there’s some pretty odd jobs out there,” Howard said. “When I was in college, I counted cans for a summer.”
