Part one of a three part series about the summer job market as it relates to Brandeis students.Living the 9-to-5 life during a summer break can be a thrilling glimpse into life as part of the workforce. Or it can be tedious, even painful.

"I felt like a trained monkey would have been able to do the job just fine," Mattea LeWitt '06 said of her job as a secretary at a law firm.

Rebecca Welch '06 offered a different take on summer employment.

"It's hard to find a job that's fun, earns money, and builds your resume, so I guess I settled on a job that had two out of those three qualities," Welch said.

Welch said she felt pressed to earn money during the summer months. A psychology major, she hopes to pursue a job in social work, therapy or counseling after graduation. However, unable to land a paid job or internship related to those fields, she took a job referred to her by an acquaintance.

"I didn't find any [jobs] related to my major," Welch said. "But this was beneficial in the sense that I can put it on my resume and get useful recommendations in the future."

She aided in planning orientation week for the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, where she tracked participating teachers throughout the summer, and performed random tasks such as arranging information packets.

For Welch, the tasks proved pretty mundane. She made phone calls, e-mailed, photocopied, packed boxes, labeled and designed Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

"It was the same thing day-in, day-out," Welch said. "I got there every day at 8:30, took care of the same jobs, and left at 5."

LeWitt had a different problem altogether: there wasn't enough work to do. She chose a job as a secretary at a law firm that seemed like an exciting, busy workplace, and where she could find out whether she enjoyed law.

However, she was only a fill-in for her position and thus, found little work to do, leaving her with a lot of time-albeit paid time-left on her hands.

Welch and LeWitt said they managed to stay amused (or simply awake) by e-mailing friends, surfing the Internet and playing computer games. LeWitt said she was able to read a few dozen books.

"I was getting paid to play on the Internet and read," LeWitt said. "It got to the point where I would be leaving for work and my mom would say, 'Read hard!'"

Welch said that despite her job's benefits (like the companionship of her colleagues) one of her summer's lessons was to avoid similar work in her future career.

"It was boring to sit in front of a computer in an office for eight hours a day," Welch said. "I realized that the office life is not what I want at all."

LeWitt also said she would prefer a more active and lively job in the future.

"I'd rather be doing some sort of job where I'm not interchangeable with everyone else, something I'm more immediately suited for," she said.

While Welch and LeWitt felt stifled by the conventional office setting, David Gorman '07 was similarly distressed by his job outdoors.

Gorman worked as a day camp counselor at Ramah Nyack in Nyack, NY. At the same time, he served as a resident adviser to a group of counselors-in-training-averaging 16-year-olds-who spent nights on the campgrounds.

Gorman said he had enjoyed camp counseling in past years, and benefitted from the free room and board. This year, however, when he was given more responsibilities, the job became increasingly demanding.

Since he often covered for another resident adviser, he was rarely able to leave on weekends. He also frequently worked more than nine hours a day, seven days a week. The campers, some of whom Gorman described as "hell-bent," were often hard to control.

Gorman said he designed punishments for his group of campers, but his clever penalties, like seating boys at the girls' table during meals, rarely put off the deviants. He also had to discipline younger counselors for shenanigans like street-sign theft and starting fires in dorm bathrooms.

In the end, Gorman said he put in a lot of work but found the job thankless. "At the end of summer, my boss said, 'You shouldn't come back if you don't like the work,' which is basically saying, 'Don't come back, and I used you,'" he said.

An American studies major and Near Eastern and Judaic studies minor, Gorman said he ultimately aspires to become a college professor. He hopes that his future jobs, including one next summer, will be more closely related to education.

While Gorman has worked at this camp in past years, he said this summer led to a new realization

"This is a complete dead-end job," he said.

While their jobs didn't necessarily prove enjoyable or open new doors for the future, the students agreed that their summer work reinforced their decisions to attend college. And the income involved didn't hurt.

"I didn't do anything, but it was nice to make a lot of money," LeWitt said.