Scanning books, washing dishes and waiting tables are common experiences of college students around the country trying to make a buck in between parties and study sessions. Some Tufts students, however, have found less typical ways to pay their bills.
Senior Mari Pullen is the antithesis of the stereotypical, anorexic, attention-craving model. She had never even considered becoming involved in "showbiz," until the opportunity apparently fell into her lap.
As a sophomore, she was asked to be a fill-in model for a fashion show in Cambridge.
After some networking with clients at the show, Pullen went on to model for other companies such as bostonfashion.com, North Shore Magazine, and Michael's of Boston.
Today, Pullen usually takes three jobs per week, which include print shoots, promotional shoots, and runway shows.
"It's hard to turn down jobs, but I try to take up as much as I can because of opportunities to get paid and to meet people," Pullen said.
The senior always bears time-management in mind and, luckily, her agency allows her the flexibility to take however many jobs she wants.
A runway show might be a nine hour time commitment, and a promotional job can take up to four hours.
Long hours aside, Pullen considers her modeling career to be fortunate, as she had never expected to have such opportunities in her lifetime.
"I got lucky with being at the right place at the right time," Pullen said. "It was the kind of thing where the ball started rolling, and I've been running with it."
However Pullen says that she does not consider modeling as a defining factor in her identity.
"[Modeling] is something [I do] for myself," Pullen explained. "It's something I don't want to be known for. To this day, no one I know has come to my shows."
Although few students at Tufts get paid to model or act, many do participate in the University's shows and productions, logging away the hours without compensation.
Sophomore Julie Hanlon is one of those dedicated Tufts actresses, yet she has managed to find a lucrative niche within the Tufts theater community in order to pay the bills.
As a seamstress in the costume shop since the first semester of her freshman year, Hanlon has contributed to the designing and sewing of the costumes for almost every production put on by Tufts in the past two years.
"I already live in Aidekman," Hanlon joked, "so I figured I might as well get paid to work there too."
"I also like spending even more time with all of these people," she added.
Hanlon has been involved with theater productions since early elementary school, but she didn't become involved with costumes until after taking a series of sewing classes one summer during elementary school.
A class on costume design in high school helped to further hone her skills, and she is now a major part of the University's various theatrical productions.
"I'm most proud of the puppets I made in the production of "Avenue Q," put on last semester," Hanlon said.
Although clearly less glamorous than strolling down the runway or creating elaborate costumes, working for the Tufts Telefund can be a surprisingly interesting experience for students.
At Telefund, students must call alumni, parents of Tufts students, or friends of the University and ask for donations to the institution.
Senior Eugene Fayerberg, who has been with Telefund since this January, enjoys the job because of the convenient location, decent pay, and low stress level of the job.
"It's the closest job that I could find and fairly well paying in comparison to other jobs," he said. "I could do research [for a professor], but I wanted a job that I wouldn't get all crazy about."
"You just come and make a few phone calls, whereas with research, you go to bed thinking you could've done something differently," he explained.
Fayerberg also seems to identify with the mission of Telefund on a personal level.
"I get scholarships and I'm [on] financial [aid], so when I ask people for money, it's helping me, and it's cool to help other students with that," he added.
Fayerberg's job at Telefund has provided fodder for some good stories as well.
Recently, he talked to a 1964 alumnus who asked if male students still participate in panty raids, where they sneak into the girls' dorms and steal their underwear.
Although Fayerberg responded in the negative, he did enlighten the alumnus about the tradition of Naked Quad Run.
Thanks to boosts by the Tufts Telefund, the Tufts budget is able to afford daily deliveries of the New York Times. The papers, however, don't just appear on your front steps magically.
Ever since the premier of the cult-classic musical "Newsies" in the early 1990s, the job of delivering newspapers has acquired a romanticized reputation.
And while he may not embody the perception of the traditional "Newsie," senior Chris Healey is able to manage the deliveries of the New York Times throughout campus, even without the cap and vest.
Healey's responsibilities include finding two delivery people, one uphill, one downhill, and sending monthly delivery reports to the Times.
He also communicates with residential facilities and TUPD to ensure that the fobs work between certain hours and are assigned to the designated delivery people.
Healey, a member of the ultimate frisbee team, attained both positions from the previous delivery manager, a frisbee player that graduated last year.
The delivery managers usually ask fellow frisbee players to be delivery people, and many go on to become managers.
The job does not seem to entail a lot of stress, as the only real complaint Healey might receive from students is that there are "too few or too many papers in a location, in which case the Times would switch, add, or subtract locations," Healey said.
"It's not a particularly grueling job," Healey continued, adding that he started out as a delivery person two years ago, which is more difficult.
"You deliver first, which means getting up early and hauling papers around in the cold," he said.
