Elliot T. Lake
Managing Editor, Game Reporter
Have you ever had a job you considered bizarre? Or at the very least strange for you? Three local students have recent experience with that feeling.
Over the summer, Rebecca Humphrey, a Mississippi State graduate student, worked on a farm in Starkville, Miss., taking care of livestock.
“I mostly worked with the pigs,” she said. “I enjoyed that farm because I didn’t like the idea of stereotypical production farms. This one was more environmentally conscious and allowed the pigs to live a little bit more like a pig would.”
Humphrey cared for the pigs on the pasture pork farm for three months. She regularly fed them and weighed them, checked on their nutrition levels, rebuilt fences and even vaccinated animals.
“It helped me set a goal,” Humphrey said. “I’d like to make pasture pork farming more sustainable and cheaper for consumers and the animals.”
While Humphrey was on the farm, Audrey Cobb was getting glamorous for photo shoots. Cobb kickstarted her career as a model this summer.
“I think it was a really fun experience, and I got to test my skills on the runway, so to speak,” Cobb said.
She helped a local photographer build his portfolio while also beginning her own. Cobb did face challenges that made the job feel new and strange.
“It was definitely different not being able to dress freely. I want to wear this, he wants me to wear that, but you just have to be confident and roll with it,” Cobb said. “It is kind of strange, but I feel like it’s just something that landed on my lap.”
Summer Long, a 22-year-old senior at The W, is studying Business Administration with a concentration in Healthcare Management. She spent her summer working as a Corrections Officer at the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Working in this position has been an eye-opening experience for Long.
“I learned how serious this is,” she said. “You never know how the system is going to treat somebody. There are people in there who haven’t seen their kids in a long time, and it really messes with them.”
Despite the fact that most of us believe we’re barely functional adults, Long doesn’t see this as a strange job.
“It really depends on what you want to do with your life,” she said. “Don’t do it for the money. Make sure you’re doing it to be that change in someone’s life; whatever you do, do it for the right reasons.”