College Guide - A day in the life: Paul Allis

Paul Allis, 20, is a rising junior at the University of Georgia from Stockbridge. He works at the Bolton Dining Hall three days a week during the school year.

7 a.m.

Wake up. I go to the dining hall in East Campus, I get an omelet with everything, put a little bit of sauce on top. I watch “SportsCenter” on the TV in the dining hall while I eat, then I head to my first class, economics.

2 p.m.

I get to work. Until about 4, we’ll do little things like help clean tables or just wherever help is needed, until I go to the job where I’m going to work for the rest of the night.

4 p.m.

We have specials every couple of weeks that start at 4 o’clock. One of my favorites is “On the Boardwalk.” We have Maryland-style crab cakes, crab legs, a funnel cake stand, a putt-putt golf green and arcade games. Once, we had a special with food from the different Athenses around the world. They brought in Scottie Mayfield from Athens, Tenn., and a giant cow and they served Mayfield ice cream. There’s about 17 Athenses around the world.

5:30 p.m.

Somebody sees a little black box in one of the newspaper dispensers outside the dining hall. They close down and make everyone stay outside because they think it’s a bomb. The police bring the robot to pick the bomb up, and we get back in the dining hall around 7. But it just turned out to be the machine that scans your card to buy newspapers that fell down.

7 p.m.

Sometimes I work at the hot deli. I’m making chicken sandwiches, where I cut up chicken and mix it with a sauce. You can pick from different sandwiches. One of the craziest ones I made was for some guy who asked for sun-dried-tomato bread, southwest sauce with cheddar cheese, pepperonis and pineapple. That’s one of the most awkward sandwiches I had to make because he just took a piece of every sandwich and put it together.

8 p.m.

Once we close at 8, we let a couple of the stragglers in. At 8:20 we put all the food away and start cleaning up. The managers usually make you help other people out if you finish early so everyone can leave at the same time. There’s not much fooling around. We take pride in finishing our work early. We close the stations down the quickest anyone’s closed stations down.

9 p.m.

I go home and take a shower. Being on the job, you get pretty sweaty.

10 p.m.

I study until midnight or so. It’s hard to balance work and school. Even if it’s slow, you’re not allowed to read or take notes at work. That’s a whole seven hours taken out of my day. At least people with desk jobs can do homework while they’re at work.