This past summer I worked as a waitress. While my friends were busying themselves with important sounding jobs, I was running around screaming, sweating and delivering food to people at a local Italian restaurant, Marco Polo. I must admit that I often felt quite inadequate when I talked to my friends about their summer jobs.
Most of them were busy interning at law firms, working on Capitol Hill, tutoring for SATs, splicing genes in a lab or working for a radio station in Times Square. I kept telling myself that next summer I’d get a real job.
As is with most summer jobs, I really did not like working at the restaurant. Many times I even dreaded going in. I didn’t dislike it because of the actual work, though. In fact, I quite enjoyed the serving aspect of the job.
The reason I hated going to work was because it made me feel so uncomfortable. I have never in my life felt so spoiled and ashamed for being heavily supported monetarily by my parents. Most of my co-workers were not college students. Some of them were my age, but they were single mothers raising their children with no help from anyone. Others were immigrants who came to America for a chance to make more money (although I doubt they envisioned 12 hour shifts in an Italian restaurant when they made their plans.)
Of the few co-workers who were in college, most of them were paying for all or most of their tuition. They didn’t have the luxury of going to Duke. After going to a state school, one will find herself up to her ears in debt. Another has to commute to school from New Jersey to New York while working four days a week at Marco Polo during the school year to pay her bills.
None of my co-workers were mean to me. Not even close—although I knew that they resented me at least a little. I sometimes resented myself when I was there. As much as they tried not to let their feelings show, I sensed them anyway. Most of my co-workers were laboring to support themselves while I was working so that I could pay for clothing or drinking, gas or concert tickets, an iPod or a trip to Myrtle Beach. I felt so guilty, like I didn’t deserve anything that I had.
Although we all knew that making good tips at the restaurant was due partly to skill but mostly to getting lucky with generous tables, I will never forget the day that I was “top-dog,” or made the most tips for that night. I could feel the anger and frustration toward me saturating the air. I couldn’t wait to leave, and I never wanted to go back.
I began to think about how strange life was. Just months earlier, at Duke, I had felt an equally awkward feeling. Compared to what I saw around me, I couldn’t help but feel underprivileged and even sorry for myself, like everyone had more than I did. Then there I was at Marco Polo, ashamed for being so spoiled.
My job as a waitress allowed me to interact with so many different types of people in so many different ways. Some of the time I was there I felt so far out of my comfort zone that I wanted to throw off my apron and run out the door, but I realized so much about the world outside my small home town and Duke University.
So maybe I can’t write on my resume that I spent my summer filing papers at a law firm, but so what? I had never thought twice about looking for an internship for the summer before I talked to all my friends. It is so easy to get wrapped up in and blow out of proportion the importance of the Duke bubble.
My experience this summer has enabled me to view life at Duke as what it really is: one small microcosm of a gigantic society that we are all a part of, even if we sometimes try to forget it.
Lauren Fischetti is a Trinity sophomore.
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