UMass Amherst offers so many ways to make the most out of your educational experience. When I attended new student orientation, there was a common theme: Get involved on campus, and before you know it, time will fly by. Well, three years and five campus jobs later, time has indeed flown for me. Getting a part-time, on-campus job is a great way to learn new skills, establish a strong network, and leverage these opportunities for the future. The financial compensation is also a huge perk! Without further ado, here is a chronological list of my many campus jobs at UMass Amherst. 

1. The Newman Center Café

I used to tell people that I got this job because my manager and I had the same first name: Anne (my full first name is Anne Lizette). What actually happened was, I found out about this job through the auxiliary services web page, sent Anne an email, and promptly made my way to her office to talk in person. As I waited for what I thought was going to be a formal interview, I called my mom to help calm my nerves. To my surprise at the time, when Anne invited me to her office, she hired me right away! We talked about logistics like how to get me set up in the payroll system and how soon I could start my training. She also chuckled at our name coincidence. 

I think what really got me hired that day was how I took initiative. I was a young, first-year student with very limited work experience, let alone experience in food service. I came in prepared and professional, and I was ready to hit the ground running with this job at Newman. 

By now, you might be wondering what this job at Newman entailed. The Newman Center at UMass Amherst hosts Catholic mass and other services, and underneath they have a café—and in the back, I made the sandwiches. This was my first job where I had to wear an apron, refill supplies in the morning, assemble the cold wraps, call up orders, and occasionally work the toaster. I was excited to get paid biweekly because I felt like I was really earning that money. 

I also made really good friends with a woman older than me who I assisted with the sandwich making. She became a mentor in a way, and I loved listening to her stories about her different jobs before Newman. She inspired my work ethic at the time.  

2. UMass Undergraduate Admissions

My time at Newman got cut short due to the pandemic, so while taking my online classes from home in fall 2020, I looked for a new opportunity. 

I first found out about blogging for UMass Admissions from a peer advisor whom I visited in the Communication department. She held a similar role with Admissions at the time and helped me write the first cover letter I’d ever submitted! This was also my first job interview ever and my first job that directly related to my communication and journalism majors. 

Through Admissions, I got to meet so many different people, from alumni to leaders of student organizations. One of the most rewarding moments for me was when I wrote a blog post about History 247—a Filipino history class I took in spring 2020. A Filipino student, who was then a senior in high school considering attending UMass Amherst, read my article and reached out to me. Now, we’re good friends and he’s an active member of the UMass Filipino Student Association that I helped to establish.

3. The School of Public Policy 

I can confidently say that my job at UMass Admissions has opened the most doors for me. One such door was another opportunity as a communications assistant for The School of Public Policy (SPP). On the day of my interview, I remember being told that I would hear back about whether I got the position within a few days. But I decided to send a thank you note to my interviewer, including samples of some of the graphics I’d created for Admissions to show my working knowledge of the UMass Amherst branding style. I got the job later that day. 

My role entailed crafting the “job bulletin” newsletter where I compiled and sent different work and internship opportunities to students in SPP. As an aside, up until recently, SPP was exclusively a graduate program. I’m so excited that they’re finally expanding to the undergraduate student population! 

On my last day working for SPP, I was given an unexpected note from a student who landed an internship from one of my newsletters: “I wanted to say thank you to whoever sets up the weekly internship bulletin. If it were not for the bulletin, I would have never known about [my company].” It was such a fulfilling way to leave that chapter in my life, as bittersweet as it can be to leave a job. 

4. UMass Smart About Money

Another door that UMass Admissions opened for me is my job at Smart About Money (SAM) — a peer financial literacy program committed to teaching students about financial wellness in an inclusive, understanding, and culturally responsive way. Unsurprisingly, I work on the communications team. I most definitely leveraged my contribution to UMass Admissions during the interview process for this role. 

I started working here last fall, and one of my favorite things about SAM is how our superiors really embody the organization’s values. Not only are they committed to student success in the financial realm, they’re also committed to our success as student workers. They constantly ask for feedback and redesign old systems based on what will help us most with our work. I also genuinely feel like we work as a team. 

5. Five College Center for World Languages

I also worked another job last fall as a conversation partner for the Five College Center for World Languages. The center offers independent study opportunities for a variety of different languages not commonly taught in school, one of which is the language I speak at home: Filipino (Tagalog). As opposed to a tutor who basically acts as a private teacher, I worked on role-play dialogues and improvised conversations with my students. 

Even though I’d worked several communications-related jobs at this point, this role taught me to communicate in ways I’d never practiced before — like how to cater to students with varying language fluency levels or how to be casual enough to foster free-flowing conversations while still maintaining professionalism so that my students take me seriously. 

This role was also a learning experience for me in that I had never learned Filipino from a textbook, and with this, I was creating lesson plans on vocabulary words and verb conjugations that just came naturally to me. It was such a unique opportunity to share a little bit of the culture that I love so much with the Amherst community. 

I picked up transferable skills from every single job I had at UMass Amherst, and I know that one day, I’ll be able to tap into them when I’m working a full-time job after college. For now, this is my self-reflection full of gratitude. Three years have flown by so fast.