Weird & wonderful student jobs

Are you living off lentils, donning an extra jumper rather than turn up the heating in the winter, and generally just about scraping by in your student life?

It may be that you tried to find a job, but the local pubs and bars already had their fill of student applications.

Oddly, no offices you applied to seem to be looking for someone for one day a week, well paid, with no early starts and only interesting work.

These jobs that other students hold may not have even registered on your radar as possible for you to have, but read their accounts of their weird jobs and you just might start looking.

Lucy, 20, works as a Red Bull promoter at the University of Birmingham.

Her work can involve anything from simply handing out cans of the energy drink on campus and at events, to organising promotion drives such as the milk float, when all students that left a Red Bull milk-bottle style holder on their front step magically found it full of cans in the morning.

"The major perks of the job are the flexible hours, the branded car they supply you with, and the expectation that you are out there making contacts and having a good time" says Lucy.

"The company knows that we are its face to the huge student population, and we must appeal to that market. As that means partying hard, it's the best job ever for me!"

Matt, 19, who is entering his second year studying Business at the University of Bath, has a more sedate but equally unexpected student job.

"I'm paid to work from my bed, pretty much." When pressed, he does admit that this involves a computer, telephone, and some knowledge of the business world.

"I work for a company that organises conferences for small to medium sized businesses about finance, health and safety, tax laws - pretty much anything that affects the target market."

"My job is to talk to those smaller businesses, selling the conferences. It's easy work as they're already clients, and it gives a real context to my studies which will give me a big advantage in settling in to my Year In Industry."

Problems with both these jobs, as with all other jobs taken whilst studying, can be that they can quickly eat in to the time needed for studying.12»