It can be easy for students to get wrapped in the campus “bubble” so some Grinnell College (IA) students choose to work off campus to connect with the broader community and gain valuable skills. Some do it for the higher wages that off-campus jobs often provide while also enjoying the relationships they build with community members in the off-campus environment and preparing for life after college.
“When I came to college, I knew I wanted to live in a place where I could be a part of both the school community and the town community,” student Jane Hoffman told The Scarlet & Black. She works at the Dari Barn in town while also working as a mentor in the Global Kitchen on campus.
On-campus jobs often have a bit more flexibility to help students meet academic commitments, the paper said. Plus, “a lot of on-campus jobs are really geared to be learning experiences for students,” Sasha Grigorovich, a Careers, Life and Service exploratory advisor, said. “There really isn’t a bottom line of needing to turn a profit.”
Student Katya Lackey, who works off-campus as an EMT and as a German tutor on-campus, was upfront in saying, “It’s really easy to get caught in this Grinnell bubble. It’s a little suffocating for me sometimes to be with the same 2,000 people every single day.”
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