As someone who has been fired from six boring jobs and counting, I feel fully qualified to stress the importance of them. Though I felt immense freedom after I was fired (or “quit” in case my parents are reading), the sensation soon wears thin, and so does your wallet.

A job is the last thing you want to do while you’re drowning in readings, homework and study. But part-time jobs are essential for many reasons, including the following. 

#1 Support Your Lifestyle 

Day jobs give you some buck for your bang so you can afford to party, even holiday, without mooching shamefully off your parents.

Whether you’re a get paid and spend it instantly type, or a savings stasher, money makes you feel powerful, independent, and successful.

It also helps to calculate how much you get a second. So with each tick of the clock, I can appreciate the $0.00555556 exact dollars that goes into my account.

#2 Start From The Bottom

How will you ever graduate and move on to bigger and better things if you haven’t started from the bottom?

Want to be a filmmaker? Work in a cinema. Want to work in childcare? Babysit. Want to be an author? Work in a library. All of these things form the bigger picture. You gotta start somewhere.

I knew I’d hit rock bottom when the fast food chain I was working at let me go, but this just gave me the impetus to work harder and strive for bigger and better. Which, after that, was literally anything. No one wants to stay at the bottom.

#3 It’s The Perfect Place To Make Mistakes

Day jobs are a great place to make mistakes while you are living at home and can afford to get fired. From selling $500 worth of unactivated gift cards at Christmas, to dropping five plates of food, or accidentally mixing work with pleasure and kissing the customers over the bar. These are all mistakes we’re going to make sooner or later; may as well get paid for it.

#4 There’s No Paying Job You’re Too Good For

Supermarket? I don’t like the outfit. Café? I don’t know how to make coffee. Lollipop Lady? Social suicide. I had every excuse under the sun not to work, the main reason being that I didn’t want to waste my time.

In reality, day jobs make the world go round. If everyone thought they were too good for retail then supermarkets wouldn’t be able to restock, cafes wouldn’t cook our avo on toast, and bars wouldn’t serve tequila to us desperate and dependent students.

#5 You Learn, And Fast

In no particular order, here are the things I’ve learned working in my various day jobs.

How to be a nicer, more hospitable version of myself. How to use a mop. How to call in sick. That I probably don’t want kids. Not to kiss the customers. That you can’t be fired if you quit first. How to act like you’re not hungover. How to be nice to people you despise.

But mostly, that you need the job more than they need you. Unfortunately. So show up, get shit done, and collect your paycheck.

So hold in there, day jobbers, and remember we are on to bigger and better things.