By By KATHIE HEMPEL / Niles Daily Star
NILES – Summer jobs for students. Are there any? Are they looking?
These were the questions we posed to several high school students and the college students now employed by the City of Niles Park and Recreation Summer Camp program.
A typical employer of young people, during the summer months, is Fuller's Clear Lake Resort and Camp.
"Let's put it this way, we received more applications than we had jobs," Bob Jorgensen, who operates the campground, said.
Most of the kids interviewed felt that a job would not be too difficult to come by.
"Summer it is actually a bit easier to get a job. It took me a year and a half to find a job I could work while at college. It's particularly difficult to find something related to your field of interest," Ashley Hullinger, a journalism student at Central Michigan College, said. She is shown in the photo with the story about the park's program.
Area high school students told a different story.
"It does seem there are more jobs for those 17 and over in the paper lately. I am going to be looking," Serena Hayslip, 17, Niles, said.
She is hoping to find just about anything.
"I guess I looked a couple of months before I started my full-time job in the Industrial Park in Niles. I can't afford not to work," Jacob Ketchum, 18, also of Niles said.
"I work for Polymer Color Service in Niles. Now I am working full time but it took me a month of going shop to shop to find it. It's a good job and I've got a great boss," Stephen Hayslip, 19, said.
While some choose to beat the pavement and others scan the newspapers for work, there is an alternative route that entrepreneur John Webster, 18, has chosen. Webster graduates from Buchanan High School Sunday.
"I am starting my own landscaping business. I got experience doing it with another person last year then he went off on his own, so this year I am going to keep going in my own business. Right now I am doing a pond for my mom. I like working outside," Webster said.
Austin Ferris and Alex Patterson are also Buchanan students. Each is approaching the summer break with a different attitude.
"I am not sure if I will be working this summer. Right now I think I just want to take a break, so I don't really know but I think it might not be too hard to get a job. I just haven't started looking," Ferris, 17 said.
Patterson has worked at the local Pizza Hut for the past four years.
"They are hiring quite a few more lately because a lot had quit," he said.