I’m now in my second year now at SRU, and my fifth year in college overall. It’s time to start making plans for what I want to do with my life after I graduate. This isn’t a blog about what could’ve happened but a look back at one of the things I did while I was in the twilight years of my academic career.
The summer before I worked my first job at the Park Classic Diner as a Dishwasher, just minutes from my house. With little work experience under my belt, I was going to have to start somewhere, degree or no degree. This is why I can relate to McJuggernuggets in a way. Just as Jesse moped around and didn’t want to work at the farm, his uncle told him it could be a stepping stone to something bigger. Watching one of the videos a few times, it reminds me of what I was like around his age (23/24 in 2016). I was in my early 20s in 2004 so I had a lot to learn too, despite having years of education under me.
I registered for the WESTPacs job fair (held at the Monroeville Expo Mart) that November. I went down with a classmate the morning of the event. He was a senior and in the same boat I was. Our time in college was beginning to draw to a close. I tried driving for part of the trip (from Slippery Rock down to I-79). That came to an end rather quickly (humorous speech material). I hadn’t been behind the wheel since getting my driver’s license at HGA three years before, so I was a little rusty. Needless to say, it was a disaster but no accidents happened. I had a lot of growing up to do between this day and when I would graduate.
The job fair was a much different beast than the college transfer fair that I attended a few years prior, obviously. As this has been 20 years since, I forget whom all I spoke to in my field. But I remember Eat’n Park being there. I picked up some literature about the company and learned more about them. No matter how you slice it though, I was at the bottom of the barrel.
College was my safe space and in my late teens and early 20s, I’d have rather been alone in my dorm room than around loved ones (another story for another time). In a way I felt like Sheldon too (without the knowledge, though).
I’ve been taking the time to read my Eat’n Park book that I bought last month and I’m about halfway through it. Currently, I’m learning about the other ventures that Eat’n Park was involved with. Parkhurst Dining and Cura Hospitality were familiar to me during my later college years and Six Penn Kitchen just as I was finishing school. Hello Bistro and the Porch at Schenley (and later, Porch at Siena) were formed later. Six Penn Kitchen opened in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Cultural District in 2005 and thrived. It closed in early 2018. Six Penn never struck me as a place I’d want to work at after I graduated. I thought I would be guaranteed a good job in my field because of my degree, but alas, that never worked out. I do wish I’d have had a chance to eat there while it was downtown during its decade-plus run.
I spent a lot of time on the Eat’n Park Careers page in my last year of college to see if I could land a good job after graduation. That’s how the names Parkhurst and Cura rang a bell as I was reading the chapter this week. I’m also familiar with campus dining services because I worked in that industry during my time at Slippery Rock. I worked for AVI Foodsystems and only did so for a year, only working a few days a week. If I could go back and change things, I would have worked more during college and focused on that instead of counting down the days until I’d go back to school. I kind of regretted that when I began the post-college life.
I can’t change the past but, it would have really helped to make Eat’n Park (or any other place) a part time or summer job during the twilight of my high school years.
Maybe I’d have had a better attitude after college instead of feeling entitled.
Stylish 🍒 