By AMANDA KNOWLES
Observer staff
April 2, 2008

Some go to find themselves. Some go to discover hidden passions. Some go to fulfill a sense of adventure. Some go just to soak up some sun.

All go for an once-in-a-lifetime experience – all at a cost of little to nothing.

The gig? Short-term jobs that offer young people a chance to travel to the places they’ve always dreamed of and do the things they’ve always imagined, without paying the exorbitant prices often associated with popular vacation destinations. Whether it’s joining the Peace Corps to see the world, building trails in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, or life-guarding at a Caribbean beach resort, young people are taking advantage of a multitude of opportunities to get paid to travel, and make memories to last a lifetime.

TAKING THE SUMMER JOB TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Ball parks, ice cream parlors, swimming pools, and sleep-away camps are among the seasonal settings to which high school and college youth flock each year as school lets out and students are looking for a little extra spending money for the summer months. But what happens when summer vacation becomes a thing of the past, the real world looms ahead, and the career path remains unclear?

For many young people, the transition from youth to adulthood is a struggle; finding the right job, the right city and the right lifestyle can take time and patience, and often involves making mistakes and working less-than-satisfactory jobs before finding the right fit. Coupled with a desire to travel and explore the world – something that many young people yearn for – the adjustment can lead to restlessness.

Unfortunately, for many young people, world travel is simply not an option. Financial limitations can create difficult barriers for those just starting out in the work force, leaving some to give up on their travel ambitions, putting it off for another day, another year.

What they don’t know is that there are other options.

Margaret Surface, 23, graduated from college in 2006 and relocated to Washington, D.C., where she works for a nonprofit environmental science organization. Although she enjoys her work and appreciates the contacts she is making in the environmental field, she is looking for more.

Surface visited a career counselor in December 2007, hoping for guidance in figuring out the next step to take in pursuing her career. There, Surface was pointed down a path she’d never before considered.

Jane C. Hardy, M.Ed., founder of Career Resources, Inc., a career counseling center near Nashville, Tenn., introduced Surface to a book called “The Back Door Guide to Short-Term Job Adventures,” by Michael Landes, a comprehensive guide to “internships, summer jobs, seasonal work, volunteer vacations, and transitions abroad.”

“I’d heard of the Peace Corps…and I’ve had internships,” Surface said. “But I’d never sort seen all of these experiences lumped into one category and really considered them seriously.”

Surface had considered joining the Peace Corps with her boyfriend, Kevin Shober, 24, but encountered problems with joint placement, which is only guaranteed for married couples, she said. The two have begun researching the travel job opportunities in the book, and hope to embark on their adventure within the next year.

Hardy would recommend such an opportunity to anybody who is looking for something out of the ordinary. The ideal candidates are usually young people, she said, because they aren’t tied down by mortgages, families and other responsibilities.

“The person has to have a certain degree of freedom and a mindset that doesn’t hold them in place,” Hardy said. “Some people are in a position in their life where they want to travel, but want to do it differently than taking a two-week vacation.”

The benefits of travel jobs are many, according to Hardy.

“I think it just makes the rest of your life more interesting,” she said. “It helps all of us become world citizens. It helps people learn empathy and gain a greater capacity for understanding and appreciating other people…. And the opportunities in [’Short-Term Job Adventures’] have some structure, and safety and security in them. It’s not like flying into Budapest and backpacking. There’s more structure, so it’s a risk, but it’s a safe risk.”

One of the most appealing aspects of travel jobs for young people is the ability to explore various parts of the world without breaking the bank. And the opportunities fall across the board: labor-intensive jobs such as working in sustainable living and organic farming; vacation destination jobs at beach resorts and ski lodges; outdoor jobs and active adventures; volunteer work and internships; and education and childcare, among others.

“What I love about [’Short-Term Job Adventures’] is you can choose the level of risk and the kind of risk you want to take, whether it’s two months in an environment that’s really uncomfortable, or something you know nothing about or something you know a lot about, there is something for everybody,” Hardy said.

DIGGING INTO NEW CULTURES, LIFESTYLES

Surface knew she wanted to take the next step, but she wasn’t sure in which direction she should go. As she considered pursuing a master’s degree, Surface realized she’d like to take some time off to do something fun, but knew she couldn’t afford it. Travel jobs seemed like the perfect solution.

“This would be fun and affordable, while furthering my career path and boosting my resume in some way,” she said.

Surface and Shober are exploring opportunities for sustainable living and organic farming outside the United States.

“I would like to go to Africa. Kevin would like to go to Australia or New Zealand,” she said. “Those are our top places, but honestly I would go anywhere.”

Most of the jobs either offer a stipend or provide room and board in exchange for labor. Surface expects modest living accommodations, and looks forward to living with only what she needs. The work will include a lot of physical labor, whether it’s farming, working on water filtration systems, or maintaining trails. While some jobs incorporate some office work, Surface hopes to avoid that, wishing to focus on work outdoors.

“I feel like it will be rewarding,” Surface explained. “Much more so than staring at a computer screen all day in fluorescent lighting instead of sunlight. That’s not natural.”

She hopes to gain a new perspective on the world through her experience. Emphasizing the importance of understanding different cultures and lifestyles, she noted that experiences like this can help people gain a better perspective on their own lives. Surface also looks forward to traveling outside of her job, something that many of the opportunities allow time for. An experience like this takes traveling to a new level, she said.

“I feel that the reception by the people of Africa or wherever would be different, and I just feel like you get a more complete experience of a country if you are sort of getting your hands dirty in it,” she said. “And it’s a way to spend more time in one place, if you are either getting paid, or not having to pay for travel expenses.”

While she doesn’t expect to build up any savings during her experience, Surface said she hopes to break even. She anticipates up-front costs such as airfare and travel documentation, but doesn’t expect to spend much once she has arrived. Any extraneous expenses she does encounter will be well worth it, Surface said.

“I really do see this as an investment in my future,” she said.

A TASTE OF THE GOOD LIFE

At 19, Maeve Granzin was looking for a summer job. What she found was something a little less ordinary.

Granzin spent three months living at 70th and Central Park West in New York City – a posh neighborhood most young people can only dream about – and vacationing at summer homes in Cape Cod, all while working 50-hour weeks as a nanny for a well-to-do family with two young children.

Granzin, now 24, found her job through an agency called Oregon Nannies, which specializes in placing nannies from the Pacific Northwest with families in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. She said she got lucky with her placement; in her application she requested New York City and a family with a baby. She got both. But she’s not sure it always works out that way.

“I got to experience the city a lot, even just walking around at night,” said Granzin, who worked 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. “Weekends were also my own to explore. And because I was in childcare, I got to do a lot of exploring with the kids, too.”

Granzin said that without an opportunity like this, she would never have been able to afford a summer living in New York City. She explained that rent in the city is rarely below $1000 per month – her employers paid more than $8000 – and she would never have been able to make ends meet without the free room and board she received during her stay. Granzin’s employers also footed the bill for her transportation to and from New York, an unlimited subway fare card, and a gym membership, and allowed her to use a company pass to many of the city’s museums. Her personal expenses included eating out with friends and any shopping she chose to do on her own. And, she said, the pay was great.

With the 2002 publication of “The Nanny Diaries,” and the subsequent release of the movie with the same name in 2007, Granzin said she thinks interest in becoming a nanny has grown. But, she cautioned, it’s not all fun and games; it’s a lot of hard work.

“It was definitely an adjustment period at the beginning. But that was more because I’d never had a real job before. It was a very intense real first job to have,” Granzin said. “Living in someone’s home, taking care of their kids, being asked to work these long hours…But by the time I went home, I really didn’t want to leave. I was totally satisfied by the end of the experience. It would have been a huge mistake to bail out early.”

Living and working in New York City is a very different experience than visiting the city as a tourist, Granzin said.

“It helped me plug in with the city on a much more local level rather than a tourist level. It made me feel much more legitimate. It made me feel like, for that summer, I was a New Yorker, too,” she said.

Her New York City summer has had a lasting effect; the experience boosted her resume and landed her a nanny job in her hometown of Eugene, Ore., while she was studying at the University of Oregon. She has since moved to Oakland, Calif., and has had four more nanny jobs, including her current position in a nanny share – she cares for two babies, from two different families. While she doesn’t plan to make a career in childcare, she is grateful for the experiences she has had.

“I wonder about these people who have blank checks from their parents to travel around the world. But can you put that on your resume?” Granzin asked. “If I were an employer I’d be way more impressed by someone who went somewhere and worked, rather than with someone who just gallivanted around Europe for a while.”

A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY

The opportunities for young people – or anyone just looking for a change of pace – seem endless. The programs reach across the globe, in sophisticated cities, parts of nature nearly untouched by man, and in developing countries. Most experiences come with a price tag so small the plane ticket is all one needs to embark upon his or her own life-changing experience.

“No matter what the opportunity, for a person to get out of their comfort zone, the town they know, the friends they have, and to go be somewhere that’s not comfortable, even going to a ski resort, I think it’s a great thing for a person to do,” said Jane Hardy, who found her own adventure jobs when she was young and has also organized similar experiences for her siblings.

Surface and Granzin both recommend such adventures for young people. While Surface’s sustainable living and farming experience abroad will no doubt differ greatly from Granzin’s big city childcare endeavor, there is an element of fun, learning and personal growth in both. And this is true for any of these experiences, whether its teaching English abroad – another popular experience – or being a raft guide on the Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado River.

“This time of life is a good opportunity for this kind of adventure,” said Hardy, offering advice to young people considering travel jobs as their next step. “Next week might be different, the timing may not be right. If the person has that window in their life right now, then jump in and don’t look back.”