If anyone needed to find me in my hometown, they knew to check Mrs. Murphy’s. 

I started working at the landmark mom-and-pop donut shop my freshman year of high school, accepting the storied moniker of “Murphy’s Girl” that came with the Saturdays and Sundays I spent pouring coffee and serving donuts. My coworkers and I bonded over shared shifts, best strategies for sandwich making, and competitions to see who could finish their closing tasks the fastest. 

78% of students work part-time on or off campus during their time at Harvard, and there are options ranging from student-run cafés and grilles to research positions and library jobs. There was no question that, upon arriving at Harvard, I would get a job. What I didn’t know when I arrived was that I wouldn’t find just one job, but that in my just-over-two-years at Harvard I would have the opportunity to explore a myriad of different work opportunities — learning skills and making friends along the way. 

I kicked off my freshman year by getting a job bartending at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub — a student-run bar-and-grille beneath Annenberg Hall, our first-year dining hall. The restaurant hosts weekly trivia and karaoke nights and serves up some of the meanest mozzarella sticks on campus. More than that, it offers an opportunity for students to manage a business. I loved my nights behind the bar, serving people and singing along to the songs blasting over the speakers, and my coworkers were some of the most welcoming people I met in my first few weeks on campus.  

After some time, I took the skills I honed at my donut shop and Queen’s Head and started a new job managing the Winthrop Grille — a late-night restaurant in my dorm, Winthrop House. On any given night of the week the line at the Winthrop Grille stretches from the counter to almost out the door. While I continued to take orders and fry mozz sticks, I also made the schedule each week and handled personnel and payroll forms. I noticed that people I passed by in the house would smile or wave, or when I met new people they’d say, “You work at the Grille right?” Working at the Winthrop Grille was more than a job — it made me feel closer to my house community. 

I started with service work because it felt familiar, but there are lots of other ways to make money on campus. Winter break of my first year on campus, I worked as a Hometown Recruiter for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative. I organized a trip to high schools and middle schools in Western Massachusetts, talking to students about college, Harvard, and financial aid. Seeing how excited students were about college and how sharing my experience made them see college as a possibility made me realize how much I enjoy doing college access work. I decided to apply to jobs on campus where I could do some kind of education or college access related work, and that’s how I came across Harvard First Generation Program. 

Working for the HFGP has been one of the best parts of my Harvard experience. Each week I come into the office and answer emails from prospective students, write blogs like this one, and do other work to keep our initiatives and programs up and running. Programs like HFGP are the reason I attend Harvard, and it brings me so much joy to share my story and help other first-gen students navigate the admissions process and Harvard’s campus. That I get to do this alongside the best coworkers and friends a person could ask for has made the experience of working with HFGP truly remarkable. 

It’s not easy to balance schoolwork, extracurriculars, and a job, but I wouldn’t trade the skills I’ve learned working or the friendships I’ve cultivated for anything.