Complete the table below

A from a college friend

B on the computer

C from a student job centre

A easy

B challenging

C unusual

A learning about the environment

B working with children

C caring for the animals

A won’t take a job

B will work at the zoo.

C will work elsewhere

11.travelling

12.get good shoes

13.wearing formal clothes

14.large office

15.good pay

16.live nearby

17.B

18.C

19.B

20.A

Section 2 – Student Radio Programme on Vacation Jobs

Presenter (Sarah): Welcome to Student Life. It’s spring, and many of you may be thinking about arranging work for the long vacation. So on today’s programme, Roger Anwell reports on a survey we conducted into the pleasures and problems of vacation jobs.

Reporter (Roger): Thank you, Sarah. Well, the first thing to say is that by far the majority of students we surveyed did just three types of jobs. All of these obviously had their advantages and disadvantages.

Roger: Starting with stock taking in supermarkets.

Roger: Now, one thing we did ask the students in our survey was whether they had any recommendations for other people taking on their job, and they said, perhaps not surprisingly, get good shoes. That’s the only way you can keep going.

Roger: Another job which lots of students did was office work, and the positive feature of this actually rather surprised me—until I remembered what a hot summer it was last year. Lots of students named air conditioning as the best thing about office work. The downside, which many talked about, was wearing formal clothes. Obviously this didn’t go down too well with students. The advice most people gave was to select a large office. That way you have more variety of social contacts. Otherwise the work can get very boring.

Roger: The third job which had attracted large numbers of students was as a theme park attendant, and again I got a surprise here because the big plus people talked about was good pay. It must have improved since my day, I must say. Anyway, the downside I did recognise was having to deal with difficult customers, especially in the heat when tempers get frayed. Not easy. People said that it was a good idea to live nearby because there’s a lot of shift work, and you don’t have to worry about transport at difficult times of the day.

Roger: So those were the findings from the survey on the most common student jobs, but not all student jobs have to be mundane and boring. One of the students who responded in our survey spoke at length about his amazing job as a zoo attendant.

Roger: Peter Marshall had read about work opportunities on the zoo website and just went along with a friend to talk to someone in personnel. He was offered a job there and then, as easy as that. In previous years he’d done singularly unexciting shop work, so he was very pleased to be doing such original work.

Roger: He ended up working for just under three months, which was actually slightly more than he’d anticipated, and meant that he had to miss part of university term time, but he said it was well worth it. Because he thinks he’s found his future career path as a result of this experience. He loved working on the educational side, in particular helping young kids understand about the animals in their natural environment. He said it was the most intriguing thing he’d ever done.

Roger: He tells us, though, that with final exams coming up he won’t be able to do any paid work this coming vacation, so why don’t you apply if you’re interested in getting further information about the findings of the survey.