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It may be tempting to pawn off some scut work on this poor student, and I
say go right ahead. Let him or her do a few tedious little chores, but take
some time each week (maybe the time you saved on grunt work) to do little
training sessions in some at least marginally related topics. Like, I dunno,
something you know that she wants to know.
When I was in high school, I had this image of the white collar workplace as
a mass of identical cubicles, each containing a person wearing a polyester
suit, a desk, a telephone, and a computer; and each person sat behind that
desk for eight hours a day five days a week, arranging pieces of paper in
different ways and occasionally picking up the phone to say "blah BLAH
Smithers account BLAH blah blah kill document blah blar BLAH solutioning
blah marketshare blah."
So give her something to learn while she's there. Eventually, she'll realize
that she was right in the first place, but by then, time, apathy, and
immersion will have prepared her. If she finds out now, she's just going to
run away and join the circus. And then what would you tell her parents?
Lisa.
Monday.
Hmmm.
Circus.
Charter, Tara M.:
> If you were granted a part-time, volunteer, student helper
> (i.e. high school
> student) for the summer, what tasks would you allow them to work on?
>
> Just mundane chores, or would you let them edit a few
> sentences here and
> there?
