During college my parents kept me on a pretty strict allowance that provided me with just enough money to get by, but which limited my off campus entertainment to riding the subway and eating pizza.  I was so worried about my budget that I can recall nearly every penny I spent during my freshman year, including the 7,000 or so pennies I spent on three pairs of khaki pants with draw strings in lieu of belt loops that I thought looked amazing but which I now realize looked awful if you weren’t riding around India on an elephant.

Some kids I knew at school had awesome jobs such as working at the front desk of the fitness center, but most of them got their jobs as a sort of back door division II scholarship, or as part of need-based financial aid for which I did not qualify.  At the time I had very few usable skills and even fewer friends so I ended up taking a job as a “Bentley Ambassador” which is a lot like being a tour guide only with a silly name. 

The woman in charge of the program was a chunky lady named Christine (or possibly Stacey), with spiked hair who was uncomfortably spunky and who always wore some kind of a fleece jacket indoors and who, I imagine, held scrap booking parties on the weekends.  Before I was given license to influence potential students I was made to shadow another, older, student named Brian who I knew because he wore a suit to class for no reason. His favorite part of the tour was the school’s stock trading floor, where he became very animated, and explained that numbers in red were bad and frequently offered important facts such as the total number of stairs on the campus.

I liked giving tours, but quickly tired of the overbearing fathers who tried to flirt with their own daughters by asking stupid questions and making fun of my haircut.  These fathers always had a good laugh when they asked me to make my case for why my school was better than other, similar schools in the area that they assumed I knew all about since their names all annoyingly began with the letter B.  

When tours failed to keep up with my evolving consumer tastes, I decided to try working in Bentley’s call center.  Our call center, though not in India, worked like many others, in that it consisted of tired-looking individuals making phone calls to people who were eating dinner. The boss of the call center was a guy named Nate who looked like he fell out of a giant puppet in an anti-war protest.  Nate had fewer things in common with the student population and its alums than did just about any other person on earth, but he was always on time and generally kept his hair in a neat 47 inch pony tail.

When we made calls we were supposed to act very excited about what was going on at Bentley and were given a script which was designed to be a sure fire way to sway reluctant alums.  The suggestions, which were designed to stimulate conversation, included such sure things as: "you were an accounting major? That’s great to hear, so am I!  Do you have any advice for someone who is currently an accounting major?" 

We were supposed to say these things even if we weren’t an accounting major and we got paid more if we were successful at securing pledges. Nobody had more victories than a guy named James, who was a sullen guy who looked like he should be selling video games to jaded teenagers but who routinely lapped the field by sitting low in his chair and speaking so softly it was unclear if he was talking at all. I thought I would be great at the job because I am happy talking to people I don’t know but I failed to predict just how awkward it would feel to say things like “oh, I see here you were a marketing major” in front of cute girls named Joanna.

My first big ticket job came during my senior year where I was offered a position in the school’s economics and finance lab, where I assisted struggling students with their economics homework and listened to my professor who’d gotten me the job talk about his desire to return to Greece where the women were significantly more likely to find him attractive.

It’s tough to say which job I liked the best because each had its own strengths.  I doubt if I’ll ever have to recall various facts about Bentley’s campus or be required to help my children understand the relationship between inflation and unemployment, though I’m certain that pretending to be an accountant will eventually come in handy.