‘I know I didn’t want to stay there’

Summer is usually the best time for students to earn good money . any way they can. These four students worked odd jobs and made the best of it.

Brant spent her summer earning some extra money at Pizza Hut as a hostess.

“Whenever we get big parties, it’s really crazy, and everyone is?running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” Brant said.

“There is this one time we had a birthday party for a little kid,” she said. “We had this one little kid dump their pop all over them and all over the floor, so everyone else got up and started running?around, and it made it really hard to clean up. It was really crazy.”

Brant got the job by going online and applying. Except for some crazy parties, she said the gig was fairly low-key.

“The youngest person I’ve seen trying to steal condoms was a seven-year-old girl,” said Ayers, who worked midnights at Kmart.

He sold his plasma, too.

“As far as my other school stuff, I was already $40,000 in debt and nobody else wanted to help me pay off my bills, so I sold blood plasma $30 a pop, $60 a week,” he said. “Pretty much after about three weeks of doing it, you’ll feel like crap. I still have scars from it.”

Ayres’ experiences didn’t stop at blood plasma and the young condom snatcher. He talked about a lady who yelled at him because Kmart no longer carried 8-tracks.

Working in the 62 parks of Canton, Brown spent his summer mowing, running the trash route and trimming.

“On the trash route, trash juice is running all on me, all over my clothes,” he said.

He got the job from the stimulus money Canton received for park improvements.

“I know I didn’t want to stay there and work there for the rest of my life.”

Duong worked in a family-owned nail salon, spending most of his time doing manicures and pedicures.

He learned more than he thought he would.

“One of the customers’ father left the family for their best friend’s mom,” Duong said. “She was a good customer.”

And it made him realize college was the place for him.

“I met a lot of people going to Kent in the salon, so it helped me get a little head start and a little knowledge of the campus I needed before coming.”

Contact student finance reporter Anthony Holloway at [email protected].