I’m ready to make something useful out of my summer vacation. But what I know for sure is that I wouldn’t like to work at any fast food restaurants. A lot of my friends already have jobs waiting for them.

Today I walked into a Walgreen Drugs store and asked if they had any job applications and a lady at the photo development center simply said, “I’m sorry. We don’t have those right now. No.” I smelled a lie in her voice but it didn’t really annoy me too much. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t picture myself working alongside four cashiers who didn’t have a single smile on their faces as they greeted customers anyway.

I checked out any job listings on-line through Monster.com, HotJobs.com and snagajob.com but they weren’t very useful to a girl my age with less than a year of real work experience (mainly babysitting jobs). So, I’m pretty much a newbie at this. Nevertheless, I still posted my resume on-line at Monster.com, highlighting my academic achievements since that’s pretty much all I have to show for the moment.

I asked around for possible job openings and some store clerks pointed me back to the Internet. I followed that direction and so far applied to Kohl's Department Store, Toys R Us, Sears, and Ace Hardware. The on-line applications were all powered by a company called UniCru so they ended up asking similar questions. It took me about half an hour to get through each of them, having to agree to a background check and list all my prior work experiences and personal contacts. The most annoying part of the process was the barrage of survey-like questions that stretched to 37 pages, with about 4 or 5 questions on each page. Examples included something like “Do you like to be alone?,” “Do you find most people annoying?,” and “Do you not get too close to friends because they end up disappointing you in the end?,” I had answered choices ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” I wonder what the best possible answers could be. I answered as honestly as possible.

I hope my summer job search comes to an end soon. I’m getting a little tired of repeating my contact information and the length of my most recent job over and over again.

I'll be taking a class this summer. Calculus AP. It's a six-week course. I basically had no choice in the matter.

I've been giving college a lot of thought lately. I know I'm only entering my Junior year of HS, but its slowly beginning to creep into my consciousness. I suppose its because my sister just graduated from college, and my friends are all talking about their college choices. SAT tests are Junior year as well...lucky me. See, this is how my brain works! I barely ended my sophomore year and I'm already thinking about graduation and college. I kind of know what I want to major in -- marine biology. That would be my dream job. But first things first, finish HS!