My past two summers have been spent in the sun at the wonderful local amusement park, Waldameer. No, not as a paying guest, but as a ride operator on the other side of the BAM machine. And while it was an easy job to get with good pay, there is also something else I’ve gotten from it: experience.

Any college student will perk up when they hear the word experience. You need experience to do anything in your field, or even when you’re not looking for jobs in your field. My original job search that ended with Waldameer began with numerous retail applications, most likely rejected as I have had no retail experience before. I keep doing Odyssey week after week because in someone’s eyes this is a good body of work and it has given me experience in churning out coherent sentences about unique topics every week for a year and a half. Whatever internship I end up with will give me more experience hopefully closer to what I want to do with my career (and if not, it’s still professional experience). So what kind of experience did I get out of Waldameer?

In short, people experience. Guest services might be the way to spin in. I interacted with thousands of people over countless hours, people from many different backgrounds, different ages, different personalities. I had to learn how to be comfortable with people, fast. I had to be able to keep my head cool with an angry guest and know proper solutions to problems. I had to be the friendly face of Waldameer, even on days when it was hot, when I was sore, or when there just seemed to be problem after problem.

Everyone should work in some sort of service industry at some point. This could be retail or food, or even being a ride operator at an amusement park. It is invaluable experience because I cannot think of a single job today that does not require dealing with other people. We are in a smaller and smaller world, meeting people from all sorts of backgrounds. And we need to know how to communicate with other people. We need to interact respectfully. We need to treat every person in every profession with dignity, whether it be our bosses at big corporations or our waiter at a small restaurant. I think that starts by getting some experience from the service side of things.

As a last little tip I picked up in my professional development class, you can spin any little job you’ve had before your “career” as some sort of experience. (For example: any job involving child wrangling, like countless hours in Kiddieland, could be spun as management experience. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!)