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I sadly missed out on one which was absolutely perfect for me in terms of making money and learning at the same time. Namely fibre glass moulder (layer, whatever you want to call it) for boats. I could even have asked my grandfather for some advice as he built his own boat from fibre glass years ago.

Damn, I wished I got that job as most of you know of my glass/carbon fibre antics and it would be a very valuable learning time and best of all get paid for it instead of only spending it.

Anyone of you have fond (bad ) memories of summer jobs?

Some encouragement Kurtiejj

In 1964 my brother's 1st summer job, as a manual labourer scrapping limestone gravel from train freight cars. The cars had "bomb-bay" type bottom doors - once the gravel was dumped he had to climb into the freight car and dig out the last few hundred kilos stuck in corners - wind blowing dust up through the doors - 30 C - no shade - he came home covered in fine gray dust - every joint inflamed with abrashive grit - eyes bright red - with the energy of a corpse, looking like a white ghost.

This experience convinced him to vigourously pursue an education in Mechanical Engineering. The project he is most proud of is having worked on the design team at Spar that produced the robotic arm - the Canadarm 1 that was mounted on the the space shuttle in 1981

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Manipulator_System

The theme is - Stay in School. Follow your dreams. Plan for the future.

I finally quit working for Matt, a local engineer, which involved ridiculous hours (the last job I did involved refitting rear arms on his CX at 3am 30 miles from home!) no pay but alot of fun and experience. As of 3 weeks ago I work at Wimpys burger restaurant surrounded by chicks (yes, pale, greasy, malnourished chicks, but chicks non the less) for very little pay, limited satisfaction and free burgers which will undoubtably drive me to an early grave, thank heaven I still cycle to work to get rid of it!

Still, when I'm Chief Engineer steering Prodrive to WRC/F1/Le Mans glory or running TomDawsonMotorsport to WRC/F1/Le Mans stardom I'll know I worked up from the bottom and that'll give me most satisfaction of all.

For sure Tom, starting at the bottom seems to be the good way. I worked at a supermarket which frankly was just underpaid. I worked my pants of for a year to get a new contract, only to hear a day before my contract expired that it wasn't going to be renewed. My god I was angry when they had no other explanation for it than that I didn't smile enough . It was good I only had nappys in my hand and no bottles of wine because I would have dropped them .

If I would ever have people working under me, I at least know how to not treat them.