Working and College at Seventeen

By: Immanuel Renato Jovandy

I started working for the first time when I was 17 years old. At first, I had no intention of working at all because I only wanted to focus on my college. However, when I graduated from high school, most of my friends started working. I became motivated by that, and I also felt a bit jealous because they could already earn their own money. That made me take the initiative to look for a job. In the beginning, I felt confused about where to start. Then I opened Instagram and looked for job vacancies through accounts that posted available job opportunities. At that time, I was trying to choose a field of work that suited me, and I began submitting job applications online.

While waiting to be called for an interview, I started working at a construction store. I was able to work there because the store belonged to my family through my father. However, I felt that working in a construction store didn’t suit me because it wasn’t the field I wanted. For that reason, I decided to quit and waited for interview calls from the jobs I had applied for earlier. Eventually, I was called by three places for interviews, all of them coffee shops: Jumpa Kopitiam, Shokunin, and Barabiru. I was still unsure at first, so I chose not to attend the interviews at Jumpa Kopitiam and Shokunin. But when I received a call from Barabiru, I gathered the courage to go to the interview. It was the first job interview I had ever attended in my life, and surprisingly, I got accepted to work at Barabiru.

When I started working, I felt very exhausted, and my schedule became very tight because I worked in the morning until 16:30, and at 17:00 I had to attend my classes. From that experience, I learned the importance of managing and valuing my time. I also began to feel proud because I could earn my own money and not burden my parents. I am truly proud of myself for being brave enough to start working and earning my own money at the age of 17. My message is that there is nothing wrong with trying to work at a young age, because we can gain experience, meet new friends in the work environment, become more disciplined with time and attitude.