Home for the summer after my first year of college, my first priority was to find a job. Living with my parents guaranteed me food and board, but I'd tasted enough financial independence at school to make a summer without it a bit degrading. Besides, I'm a workaholic, and if I spend any longer than a weekend without any responsibility to attend to, I start to get irritable, thinking myself the laziest creature that ever graced the living room couch.

I arrived in Colorado on May 25th. I knew I was behind the local high school and college students in applying, so I spent my first two days of summer hopping from business to business filling out applications. Armed with my past employment history, three references, and my social security number, I filled out forms at restaurants, stores, laborcompanies, you name it, until I started feeling like a job-search flirt, making suggestive comments to every store manager in the town about my 24 hours a day, seven days a week availability. Every time a manager glanced at my form and asked, "So you're leaving the state again in September?" I steeled my heart and nodded, knowing I'd probably been crossed off the list.

After filling out about fourteen applications that first week, the waiting began. I'm not good at waiting, but the options seemed bright. I scored an interview with a local grocery store. The hiring manager conducted my interview on the outside patio, and discussed scheduling and pay logistics with me for fifteen minutes before asking, as an afterthought, my views on customer service.

"If someone's being a complete jerk, I don't hesitate to call my manager," she told me.

The next day, I attended a drop-in interview at a smoothie restaurant. The manager on duty was a girl about my age, who leaned back in her chair with a clipboard and asked questions that likely came straight from the corporate office. The girl sighed at the unending line of customers at the front of the store and asked heavy questions like, "How do you define integrity?"

Clearly, standards are high at the smoothie joint.

In the meantime, I begged yard work chores off of my mother and set to organizing the basement, cooking meals, or any other task that mimicked the satisfaction of a job. The phone rarely rang anymore. Perhaps it is naïve that I did not know this already, but most businesses will not let you know if your application is out of the running. I understand that hiring managers don't have the time to call everyone who applies, but I was more than willing to call them and that did not seem productive, either.

"Hello, my name is Kelly and I applied for a position last week. I'm calling to check on the status of my application," I said. The usual reply was either:

"The manager is still looking over applications. He'll probably call you next week," or the ever baffling,

"We haven't been hiring since April."

Once I walked into a restaurant and told the manager I was interested in applying for a hostess or waitress position. He gave me the form; I sat down on a bench, and handed it back to him ten minutes later. He glanced at it and said,

"We don't actually need waitresses or hostesses at the moment. And we don't hire people for just the summer,"

On the other hand, the Highlands Ranch Community Association, who hires for the recreation centers, sent me a formal letter to verify that they had received my application. A week later, I attended an interview for a janitorial position. I do not believe the two women were convinced that a small college student who looked about sixteen years old would clean toilets without complaint, despite my assurances. I did not hear back.

Meanwhile, I was getting to be on very friendly terms with the woman who interviewed me at the grocery store. We exchanged no less than six calls on the status of my background check, which had apparently gone missing.

"If you fill out a new one and it clears, you'll have ajob," she assured me. Ecstatic, I returned to fill out the background check. After another three or four phone calls, I grew uneasy again. One morning she called and said,

"My budget manager just told me that we can't afford to hire anyone else."

She apologized, and while I was mentally screaming at the prospect of unemployment, I actually felt bad for the woman though she'd led me along for two weeks. Every time we'd talked or I'd visited, the grocery store had been packed with customers and short on staff.

"I just need to go home and lie down," she told me.

Growing desperate, I consulted Craigslist.com. 'College House Painters wanted in Highlands Ranch area,' it told me. I called the number, and a girl, again my age, interviewed me over the phone. I assured her that I was not afraid of heights and she told me to show up at an address tomorrow for a 'tryout' of sorts.

At a three-story house the next morning, I nervously met the girl I'd spoken to on the phone.

"Unfortunately, all we have left on this house are the two hardest spots," she said, pointing to two sections of trim on the third floor windows, inaccessible from the lower porches or roofs.

This is how I ended up two and a half stories in the air,with a paint roller in one hand and my other hand clinging to the flimsy ladder. Climbing a ladder was more nerve-wracking than I remembered, and this one seemed to lurch perilously about two thirds of the way up. Reaching the trim even from my vantage point was tricky, and in order to refill my roller Ihad to return to the paint can at ground level. My first time up with the full roller on an extension, I lost track of the roller and smeared the gray exterior of the house with white trim paint. On the next climb, I drug up a hose and sprayed down the spot (the water rebounded and sprayed down my t-shirt as well). The girl peered at me from the back fence of the backyard. After about a dozen climbs, I finished the first window.

"Now that wasn't quite fair, because most of our work isn't nearly that difficult," she told me. "But you had a good attitude, and I like to see that. Call me on Sunday and I'll give you a fairer shot on Monday." Then she mentioned the fifty-hour workweeks.

I considered the offer for a few days. It'll build character, I thought. Or crack my head open. I didn't call back.

So I guess you could argue that I could have been employed, painting houses. It's true. But sitting here, on my couch again, I feel like that what my mother told me also has truth:

"You seem to have done all you could to get a job."

But that still doesn't cool the burn. I crave work more than vacations or summer hikes or concerts. What does cool it a little, though, is volunteering. I walked into the SAME café on Colfax two weeks ago, which accepts only donations or kitchen work in return for its meals, and asked if I could help. That same day, I was washing dishes, serving customers, and peeling potatoes for an owner who actually recognizes my name when I call to schedule another day. Last week I also started volunteering at Hudson Gardens, rebuilding mounds around pumpkin plants with a 73-year-old woman who quizzes the younger workers with multiplication tables as we work, though all of us are well beyond elementary school.

I realize that my chances of being hired now, when I can only work for eight weeks before returning to college, are minimal. So I've loosened my grip on that goal.

I should be glad that I have the means to spend a summer serving the community rather than pinching to make ends meet. But the restlessness continues, and every time I withdraw some of the money I'd earned working during the previous semester, my frugal side grows woozy for a moment.

So, if you need cheap labor to mow your lawn, wash your dishes,or even scrub your toilets, you know where I'll be.