When he’s in a tree, there’s no place he’d rather be. Cathedral Catholic senior Brett McElhaney started a landscaping business during his freshman year that requires him to climb trees and provide a variety of landscape services to customers all over Southern California. In addition to six hours of school a day, sports practices, and extracurricular activities, many Cathedral Catholic students, like Brett, have jobs while enrolled as full-time high school students.

A common place of employment for students is at various restaurants in San Diego. Senior Zach Nicholas, bus-person and host at Islands in Carmel Mountain, said that food service jobs “make you realize the bad habits that you have at restaurants.” Other than pin-pointing bad restaurant habits, Zach said that on the job “you have to deal with many different kinds of people,” and he recommended “getting a job at a restaurant in high school because you can learn a lot about people and how to handle yourself.”

Other working Cathedral students are taking part in real-world experience through their jobs. Senior Elizabeth Sullivan took up a server/bus-person job at Wings N’ Things in Carmel Mountain in the summer before her junior year, and has been working two to five shifts a week there ever since. Elizabeth said that the job teaches her face-to-face communication. “In today’s day and age, I feel like having a job really forces you to communicate with people, almost like you’re in a speech class or something like that.”

Although many teenagers view work stereotypically, as monotonous and boring, Cathedral Catholic Senior Robbie Smith described his job at Baskin Robbins in Solana Beach as, “Free ice cream, and the coworkers are pretty entertaining and lively.” From improved social awareness to free ice cream, Cathedral students find a wide variety of benefits in their jobs.

Senior Carly Stuppiello, a sales associate and cashier at Adidas in Carlsbad, said that her coworkers make it worthwhile because “it’s cool to interact with people from different places and all working together for a common goal.”

Zach Nicholas said the same of his coworkers at Islands. “Everyone there just tries to help each other out. Doesn’t matter if they gain money or they lose money, it’s just, you know, get it done.”

Besides paid jobs, many students take on internships applicable to their desired college majors in order to acquire work experience for college résumés. A handful of Cathedral students looking into medical school have been working at the Palomar Pomerado Hospital through the Pathmaker Internship Program. Many students have been referred to the program through their science teachers, who gave them applications and sent them in for interviews. At the internship, Cathedral students are working as ‘Level I Interns’ (the title given to high school interns.)

Carly, who is also a Pathmaker Intern, said that she is “basically an assistant to the nurses,” and she enjoys learning what both nurses and the patients experience. “I get to learn firsthand from the nurses, which is cool because I can learn a lot from them, and they’re very willing to teach.”

Students working with the program receive real-world experience in a hospital and sometimes get a sneak-peak of operations or rare procedures. Robbie Smith said that he was able to go into the operating room once where he “saw some type of open-heart surgery.” Both Carly and Robbie recommend the internship for high-school students looking into medicine, as the internship hires every three months.

The majority of our working students sought out jobs, filled out applications, and started work under a boss or two. However, Brett McElhaney decided that working under someone wasn’t his cup-of-tea. During his freshman year, he acquired a business license and started a tree care and landscape services company of his own.

He said, “I thought ‘you don’t make any money working for someone.’” So his uncle taught him the landscaping basics, and Brett began working as So Cal Tree and Landscape.

Mr. McElhaney has around six employees who work for him on-call, but Brett often works by himself with cleaning, adding landscape decorations, and tree-trimming. He employs a system of ropes, knots, gear, and belts to climb and trim trees all around San Diego, Point Loma, Mira Mesa, and even in Orange County. Brett works around thirty hours during the week and sixty or more hours without school. He said he enjoys his job a lot and stated, “When you’re up in the tree, you’re one with nature.”

Even though students put in hard work both during school hours and during their jobs, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t having fun.
Here are some of their favorite or most hilarious work moments:

Vanessa Collins, Cielo clothing store: “This one girl came into the store looking for an outfit for a work banquet, and I gave her some ideas. When she tried them on, she loved them and ended up purchasing them! She was so grateful, and it really felt good to have made someone’s day!”

Zach Nicholas, Islands: “There was one time when somebody fell and I caught them, but their shirt ripped because they were too heavy.”

Robbie Smith, Baskin Robbins: “Once I blended a smoothie without the lid on…”

Elizabeth Sullivan, Wings N’ Things: “This one time I was preparing a to-go order for a guy my age. I handed him the bag, and he grabbed it the wrong way. I knew he did, but I let go anyway. The bag fell on the ground.”