The first baby-sitting job is a rite of passage for most teenage girls, but for the young woman in college, it's a getaway back to the fun of yesteryear--plus a much needed livelihood.
"I like to be really silly, and when you're with people your own age, they're kind of like, 'What in the world are you doing?'" said Jasmine Rodgers, junior in early childhood special education. "When you're with kids, they love it, and they'll be just as goofy right back."
Rodgers baby-sits three to five times a week for different families she meets through her job as a dance teacher.
"It's really fun to play with them and be, like, the good guy and everything, and just enjoy your time and not have to be that one later that they get mad at and tells them they have to do things," Rodgers said.
Some baby sitters, however, gladly take on the responsibility of making rules.
Aleesa Sipe, junior in elementary education, is a nanny for a 3- and 6-year-old, a job she described as being more of a parent role.
"I'm more active in their lives," Sipe said. "I take them to appointments and things like that."
But being in that parent role means rules have to be enforced.
"Sometimes, the first-grader doesn't want to do her homework, and it seems so much easier to just not let her do it and go out and play, but I want to teach her that studying is something important that you have to do," Sipe said. "I want her to learn that if you work hard at something, you can succeed."
Olivia Hutchinson, sophomore in public relations, had to submit her resume and go through an interview process to land the baby-sitting job she found on Tiger Recruiting Link.
"God had his hand on me, looking down," Hutchinson said. "I'm so blessed to have found them."
Hutchinson baby-sits three to four hours a day, four to five days a week, and said her favorite part is just to see how excited the girls are about everything.
"The 5-year-old--she has red hair," Hutchinson said. "And she always says that Aubie is her best friend because he has red hair, or he has orange hair."
One thing Jilian Petty said she learned from baby-sitting is that kids say the funniest things.
"We were in his room, and he walked out and locked himself out of his room because they just put new locks on them, and he's just fascinated by the locks," said Petty, who will be starting nursing school at Southern Union this summer. "Then he was wanting back in, and he was like, 'Jiwee, let me in, let me in,' and I'm like, 'What's the password?' And he said, 'Umm...Jesus!' And so I really wasn't expecting that at all."
Petty said baby-sitting for a family is great because of the close relationship you already have.
"You're more comfortable with them," Petty said.
Of course, every baby-sitting experience can't always be positive.
Rodgers said one of her worst experiences was with a mother trying to get the most bang for her buck--by adding a chore list to the mix.
"Along with having three kids that were 2 years old, it was like, do the dishes, do the laundry, fold the laundry and vacuum and all this stuff," Rodgers said.
But sometimes it's the kids themselves who throw the baby sitters for a loop.
"I had a girl who, she got back--her friend dropped her off from riding horses--she was dirty, and she needed a shower," Rodgers said. "And she is usually such a sweetheart, and she just refused to take a shower. I was like, 'Why don't you want to take a shower?' and she was like, 'I don't want to get clean.' And so I kept insisting to the point where she locked herself in the dog's crate."
One of Rodgers' biggest challenges is with her kids who have special needs.
"I have two that have to get fed through feeding tubes in their stomach," Rodgers said. "It took getting used to at the beginning...I was so afraid of messing up. You just look at it, and it's just a tube sticking out from their stomach. And they're like, 'Be careful, you can pull it out so easily, and then you have to quickly stick a pencil in there and bring her to the emergency room.'"
But the girls all said baby-sitting was worthwhile--and not just for the extra cash.
"I think it's a really good job to have as a college student because it's not--I don't want to say it's not a hard job because there's definitely challenges--but it's not like I have a boss hanging over my shoulder," Sipe said.
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