The Best Campus Jobs at UIUC: Pay, Learning, Free Time, and the RA Tradeoff
This is an excerpt from The Jailbroken Guide to the University.
What this means in practice
The decision rule is not salary alone. First decide whether you need paid work at all. If yes, compare each role on four dimensions: cash, expenses it replaces, skills it teaches, and free time it consumes. The manuscript compares dining hall, library or museum desk, front-desk, tour-guide, Research Park, and RA work by those tradeoffs. The RA stands out when housing and food are the real financial problem; research or major-related work can be better when it teaches more without paying less. If you do not need the money, protect time for learning, projects, and serendipity.
15.4 Jobs During College
If you need money:
• Get a job, but try to get one that actually teaches you skills and pays reasonably.
◦ Don’t sleepwalk into the dining hall or library just because it’s the obvious campus job. If you need the money, take the job and learn from it. If you have options, choose work that teaches you something
• If tuition, room, and board are already covered, you do not need a job.
◦ Don’t get one just because you feel like you “should.”
◦ Use your time to learn, create projects, and follow your curiosity.
◦ If you have scholarships or your tuition is covered, invest your time in things that compound and yield larger returns. Right now, you should care about compounding, not squeezing out every dollar. That’s why you need to Do Things that Have Greater Outputs than Your Inputs.
• If you do need money — for loans, family support, or basic expenses — get a job that teaches you at least as much as it pays you.
◦ Sometimes a research position or a job related to your major pays just as well as the dining hall, if not better.
If you don’t need money:
• Don’t get a job.
• Focus on learning, starting projects, running experiments, doing research, or whatever genuinely interests you.
Quick Guide to On-Campus Jobs (Pros & Cons)
Dining Hall — $$
Teaches: Operations, empathy.
Hidden upside: Free meals, evening shifts leave daytime free.
Hidden downside: Tedious, repetitive.
Library / Museum Desk — $
Teaches: Quiet homework time.
Hidden upside: Homework on the clock, meet faculty.
Hidden downside: Boring. You get paid to do your homework. But so what? You don’t learn much.
Front-Desk Admin — $
Teaches: Logistics, operations.
Hidden upside: See how departments actually work.
Hidden downside: Similar downsides as above.
Tour Guide — $$
Teaches: Storytelling, public speaking.
Hidden upside: Warm introductions to admissions.
Hidden downside: Perhaps you could be doing more.
Research Park — $$
Teaches: Corporate R&D.
Hidden upside: Could be interesting.
Hidden downside: Far from campus, often overrated.
Resident Advisor (RA) — $$$, housing + meals
Teaches: Leadership, conflict management.
Hidden upside: Free housing and food, meet hundreds of people, CEO training.
Hidden downside: Endless meetings, bulletin boards, duty shifts that trap you inside the building, random calls in the middle of the night, and always having to be ready to jump into action without warning.
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What about Research Park? I never worked there, so I can’t personally say. From what I saw, some people had genuinely good experiences, while others treated it like a prestige-flavored campus job and did not learn much.
Two people who did work there — Monica Para and David An — wrote a Guide to Research Park, which you might find useful.
The biggest downside of any job is losing free time.
In college, more than ever, you want free time to go to random talks, meet interesting people, try random experiments, read books, explore random classes, focus on your classes, create cool projects, and let serendipity happen.
If you’re stuck in a job just to make money, you’ll miss out on all that.
But if you need a job, though, it can still be valuable. Try your best to learn. You might make friends, learn what trading time for money actually feels like, and get motivated to build a life where you don’t have to do it forever.
15.5 Should You Be an RA (Resident Advisor)?
I was an RA for three years, and I actually really liked it. Free housing, free meals, and the chance to meet a lot of people. I met around 200–300 people every year just from being an RA.
I was also pretty good at handling bureaucracy and didn’t mind conflict or random midnight calls. But if I’m being honest, the bigger motivation was that I needed the money to afford school. So, of course, I had to like it.
If you need money but still want time to learn and work on projects, being an RA can be close to ideal. It covers two of the biggest expenses in life: food and housing.
So should you become an RA?
• If you don’t need the money, don’t do it.
• If you need — or want to save — money, do it. It’s probably your best option.
People who become RAs without needing the money usually end up tired, annoyed, and constantly asking themselves, “Why am I doing this ?” They think about quitting every week. For those of us who actually needed the money to stay in school, quitting wasn’t really an option, so we learned to love being an RA, and usually ended up doing it for more than a year.
Honestly, it’s not that bad. You get used to it, and eventually, you might even love it (especially if you really need the money). Learn to do your job well, then move on.
15.6 What are the Best Campus Jobs?
The best campus job is no job at all.
If you can afford it, don’t work. Spend your time learning as much as possible. Focus on your rate of learning and growth, not on making a few extra bucks.
Over time, the skills and knowledge you build will be worth way more than any campus paycheck.
A Quick Story
One of my good friends was earnest.
He worked three jobs to pay for his apartment, food, and other expenses. His parents already covered his tuition, but he didn’t want to rely on them for anything else. He felt a strong responsibility and thought it was unfair or selfish not to earn his own money.
I remember telling him his parents were fine supporting him. Accepting their help wasn’t taking advantage of them. The best way to show gratitude wasn't by hustling at random jobs, but by using the opportunity wisely. Instead of clocking hours, he could spend his time learning skills, working on projects, or taking one of his curiosities seriously. His parents would be happier, and so would he, if he built something meaningful.
Eventually, he quit those jobs and focused on projects he genuinely cared about. Now, one of those projects and the skills he developed are what he spends most of his time on. It could turn into his life and, possibly, a way to earn far more than those jobs ever would. Enough to pay his parents back and support other students down the line.
