“I find a purity and an honesty in children that I do not find in older people,” says Sarah Medhat, 20, a fourth-year pharmacy student and art assistant on the junior summer programme offered by a private university in Cairo. Medhat has spent her summers working for this programme since she was in grade 12 at school. “I like to spend my time on something useful and on something that will benefit others too,” she comments. Beside her work, she says that speaking English to the children helps them to practise the language. She works with children from six to 10 years old. “I think this is the most important phase in their lives,” she explains. “It is the one in which they learn a great deal that will be useful for them later.” For her, she says, the job also helps to make her a more active person. There are few disadvantages to the job. “I don't spend much time with my family, but I still find time to spend with them in the evenings,” she says of her work, which lasts from 8:30 am until 3:30 pm each day. But dealing with children can be challenging as they can sometimes be noisy and she has to take special care when looking after 25 children. “I advise people to work in the summer if they have some free time because it is really useful and they will feel they are doing something useful with their time,” she explains. Mariam Mustafa, 20, a third-year student majoring in psychology, also works in summer in different fields. The most beneficial job she has done, she says, has been to teach children about sexual harassment and how to defend themselves from it, something which is also related to her field of study, psychology. “It was beneficial for me to understand children's psychology through observing how they deal with each other in the class or in the playground,” she adds. Mustafa worked with children in the first, fourth, fifth and sixth primary grades, and she also taught English. Among the advantages of the job was the way the teachers dealt with her, and she feels she was able to teach the children well. “This had an impact on me as well,” she says. “It was not only about my having an impact on the children.” Mustafa used to work with the children during the summer vacation from university, but she planned to work with them on her day off in the academic year as well. This plan changed because she did not have a fixed schedule, however. She currently works in a media team, and although she does not have a specific job description she is happy with the work she is doing. She plans to move soon to another job in the human resources department of a real estate company. She believes that students should work in the summer because gaining work experience at an early stage will be better for them later. It “will help them choose an option later that will be better for them,” she stresses, adding that as a result of her work she now has experience in teaching, human resources and the media. The writer is a freelance journalist.
