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What you did for cash during cs

OVERTONE69

well the questions right there in the title. for those of you that went to college, what did you do to put yourself through it when studying computer science.

im a student myself and was just interested in what kinda things you did to make ends meet?

did you clean streets?

did your parents give you a silver spoon?

list your storys of hardship and book cramming here.

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Fad

I work in a petrol station and am a lab technician part time.

CreepingDeath

Worked as a barman during the weekends and all summer.
Certainly makes me appreciate a cushy office job after 12+ hour working days.

toiletduck

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Worked as a barman during the weekends and all summer.
Certainly makes me appreciate a cushy office job after 12+ hour working days.

Ditto!

hobochris

I ran a tile warehouse.

deadbloke

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Worked as a barman during the weekends and all summer.
Certainly makes me appreciate a cushy office job after 12+ hour working days.

Same as that, and gave me a healthy disdain of drunken pricks and awkward types.

Evil Phil

I worked in software qa and then in development and went to college at night.

Ginger

Was a DJ in in a couple of different clubs, I was also a bouncer.. and worked doing ASP contracting..

Did various seemi tech realetd jobs from working in a call centre, to a net cafe to tech support. If you can get any job even vaguely related to your course it'll help you later.

aidan_walsh

Spent a few years working in a wedding and events bar at weekends, before getting a gig doing daily tech support for a company.

Sparks

Worked some intern jobs during the first two summers (Microsol, Ericssons) and in the college for the third summer (in the AI lab, which needed far more explanation to my relatives in the country than was really comfortable), and just didn't spend anything during the year (I could have worked weekends but decided to study instead). But I was a bit of a puritan (I think you could count the number of alcoholic drinks I drank in college without running out of fingers or toes) and I was lucky enough that I could live at home so that might not be the best model to use

NeverSayDie

Far as I recall, I variously worked in an abattoir, cold store, hardware shop and library (those aren't all the one venue, I hasten to add).

Joneser

I'm still in college but I do work for the college at open days and summer schools and I am just starting off being a student ambassador, I also play music so can do the odd gig here and there. I just got a few weeks developing mobile apps too which im looking forward to

But the main reason I get through college is not spend anything because otherwise I couldn't afford to go :P

lil_lisa

I worked in XtraVision and PC World, and to be honest, I was making money p/t back then than I am now f/t

OVERTONE69

well im glad to see so many people jumped on board with this. as evil as it sounmds its nice to hear about people who were worse of than me.

lil_lisa wrote: »

I worked in XtraVision and PC World, and to be honest, I was making money p/t back then than I am now f/t

wow thats kind of depressing. might be time to start looking elsewhere for a job buddy. i always thought it folk started at a higher avg pay. regardless, im sorry to hear that.

Joneser wrote: »

I'm still in college but I do work for the college at open days and summer schools and I am just starting off being a student ambassador, I also play music so can do the odd gig here and there. I just got a few weeks developing mobile apps too which im looking forward to But the main reason I get through college is not spend anything because otherwise I couldn't afford to go :P

the mobile apps sounds interesting. as does the giging. unfortunately not everyone can just not spend anything during college, and not everyone has magic fingers with guitar.

p wrote: »

Did various seemi tech realetd jobs from working in a call centre, to a net cafe to tech support. If you can get any job even vaguely related to your course it'll help you later.

this is the most true thing ive heard. many other teachers and programmers say the same thing. unfortunately not many tech support jobs going out there, even agencys are turning students away. ive pretty much given up on finding another job, ill just deal ith stacking shelves the next 2-3 years.

Ginger wrote: »

Was a DJ in in a couple of different clubs, I was also a bouncer.. and worked doing ASP contracting..

yours is by far the most interesting comment ive read. bouncer/dj/contractor. your like james bond man. ha.

Sparks wrote: »

Worked some intern jobs during the first two summers (Microsol, Ericssons) and in the college for the third summer (in the AI lab, which needed far more explanation to my relatives in the country than was really comfortable), and just didn't spend anything during the year (I could have worked weekends but decided to study instead). But I was a bit of a puritan (I think you could count the number of alcoholic drinks I drank in college without running out of fingers or toes) and I was lucky enough that I could live at home so that might not be the best model to use

ah im on the same boat. puritan. trying for internships, the works.and i too hate explaining to relations what software is. only difference is i have rent and bills. glad to hear it was easy enough for you though.

lmimmfn

i worked on building sites in scotland during the summers

Trojan

The summer before college I worked in local county council Personnel dept. Got sucked into IT dept designing a recruitment database, but that turned into sheer pain when I had to do data entry on the DB from paper CVs after it was created.

After 1st year college I asked around and my uncle's friend worked in a tech company so I got an intern-style position on the software team (3 others + me). Built a regression test framework for their software deployed on 8 UNIX variants (twas 1996!)

After 2nd year I worked in Dell, Limerick, in the most boring but relatively lucrative Software Validation dept. I did loads of overtime and had no social life so made a decent amount that summer.

After 3rd year I had a diploma, so did a year of full-time work in a software company as a junior engineer. Tried finishing degree part-time by night but it was very tough so I went back for 1 final year fulltime.

During 4th year I taught a City and Guilds VB programming course at a local IT training company, that was decent money.

Ginger

It was just stuff I did duing college to earn cash. I also did an internship as part of my degree and worked about doing other stuff..

Just a different way through college is all

OVERTONE69

Ginger wrote: »

Was a DJ in in a couple of different clubs, I was also a bouncer.. and worked doing ASP contracting..

seriously? at what year in your studys did you start contracting?

Ginger

Third year doing some small stuff.. final year doing some major amount of work.. it was first a referall job and then turned into a handy maintainence contract and ad hoc development

RedXIV

Worked in Tesco for half of it (hated it with a passion) but then I got a job with Nintendo which was awesome

kinda miss it now

Mary-Ellen

OVERTONE69 wrote: »

ah im on the same boat. puritan. trying for internships, the works.and i too hate explaining to relations what software is. only difference is i have rent and bills. glad to hear it was easy enough for you though.

My spiel about software to relatives is
Hardward is the stuff you can kick monitors, cpus, keyboards etc.
Software is the ones and zeros stored on machines that tells the computer what to do. (Most people picture the matrix:))
If people ask how people program in 1s and 0s, I say we use languages that people and computers understand that the computer converts into binary, Only came across the odd person that wasn't satisfied with that.

Back on topic I worked in a shop the first three years and did grinds with the learning center in college for the next 2.
Working full time now in QA and study at night.

fergalfrog

I worked in a bakery, a cinema and Tesco. (and similar to earlier comment Tesco was by far the worst.)

Evil Phil

Mary-Ellen wrote: »

My spiel about software to relatives is
Hardward is the stuff you can kick monitors, cpus, keyboards etc.
Software is the ones and zeros stored on machines that tells the computer what to do. (Most people picture the matrix:))

Joneser

Evil Phil wrote: »

Haha, I find it hilarious when someone who has done ECDL doesn't think there is any difference between ECDL and what a CS grad or similar does