While you were sipping margaritas in Mexico this summer, some students stuck around here to earn a dollar or two. Film major Jackie Sutton was one of them.
Sutton, a sophomore, is currently the supervisor of the fountain on Clematis located in West Palm Beach. At the tender age of 20, she is already holding the boss’s position.
“The only person above me is the supervisor of Parks and Recreation for West Palm Beach,” Sutton says. Needless to say, summers keep her busy.
Sutton is one of a couple students who don’t work the regular nine-to-five job with the opening of summer availability after a grueling spring semester. While you were off attempting to better yourself in “the real world” (if that even exists), she was making sure a fountain worked… and with good reason.
“We have [summer] camps that come to play in the fountain during the day,” she says. “So I’m always watching it and the kids.”
The fountain is open full time during the summers, but only runs every Thursday night for Clematis by Night, a weekly “hot spot” for residents and tourists alike, during the rest of the year. For $10 an hour, it can’t get much better than this. In fact, only working 30-35 hours a week to keep an eye out is something the VIP people hear about, right?
“When I was in high school, I was a certified life guard,” Sutton says. “I was looking for life guarding jobs for the city . . . and the former fountain supervisor asked me to work.”
I guess it was just good timing. So the job doesn’t get really hard, does it?
“We’ve had incidents where homeless people have showered in the fountain,” Sutton says. “But the main reason why we have this job is so the city doesn’t have lawsuits.”
One of Sutton’s main responsibilities is to report incidents so that the city isn’t liable if an accident occurs.
Senior Chloe Dolandis, on the other hand, may have it a little easier. As a former host of Nickelodeon’s Friday Night Slime Time, Dolandis spent her summer traveling to universities up and down the east coast.
No, this was not a road trip: She actually gets paid. She also gets her face on a Web site.
Dolandis now works for YOUniversity.tv, a college virtual tour Web site that is targeted to prospective college students all over the nation.
“I’m a virtual college tour guide,” Dolandis says. “Kind of like a VJ for universities.”
Traveling from Johnson and Whales to Virginia Tech, Dolandis not only gives background information about the school, but provides the viewer with a video of what is actually going on in the future of that college.
You’d think with so many schools to visit, Dolandis would be exhausted from all that travel, right?
Wrong.
As an aspiring singer, dancer and actress, Dolandis takes the work opportunities wherever she can get them… within reason, of course.
“There are a multitude of opportunities,” Dolandis says. “Earlier this summer I was flown out to New Jersey to do tap dancing for an infomercial.”
I guess there is never a dull moment. But how will she be able to stick to her school schedule this upcoming semester?
“[This fall] is my last semester,” Dolandis says. “I’m still going to be full time.”
But what about the Web site?!
“I will continue working with YOUniversity.tv in the fall, but I will be able to work with a green screen instead of going to every university.”
Besides being an online tour guide and a infomercial tap dancer, Dolandis is working on a solo album.
“I haven’t signed anything that is completely binding,” Dolandis says. “But I’m giving myself ’til the end of this year to finish writing. I don’t want to push myself, especially when I’m trying to finish school.”
With so many different opportunities coming along, Dolandis still urges students that have the same aspirations to become multifaceted.
“You have to be able to do it all,” she says. “If you have the drive and the skills to back it up, you will never be out of work.”
