Parents of College Students

Thought this was too funny not to share!

Help wanted: Personal assistant for college kid
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33434740/ns/us_news-washington_post/

Georgetown sophomore wants someone to do laundry, drive him to to work.

WASHINGTON - Georgetown University sophomore Charley Cooper is busy. He has a full load of classes, hours of homework and a part-time job at a financial services company. He's also worried about an illness in the family. And then there are all the other time-consuming aspects of college.

The solution? A personal assistant.

Cooper, 19, logged on to the university's student employment Web site last week and posted an ad for someone to tackle "some of my everyday tasks," such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle).

I saw that link on MSN homepage this morning but didnot read the artucle.

Hi Kellie,

I got a chuckle out of my oldest telling me about hiring a virtual assistant last year. I think the contract was $30 for 6 months of work.  He came upon the idea from listening to a lecture by the guy who wrote I think it was the 4 hour work week.

My oldest said he liked that he was getting work done while he studied or slept. He outsourced bunches of stuff:  buying tickets to movies for dates,  research for his prospective job search, interview prep, even got his assistant to find us flight deals for the trip to Boston last year. Outsourced researched on his apartment deal. How much of your time do you think could be pared down with an assistant to do online shopping or bill paying?

I know it would pay to have some one doing current stock/retirement fund research for us.

I don't think it's that bad if the kid is willing to pay for it himself and this would be a good job for a kid who is an entrepreneur to make some money from his friends. I think of the money I made in college typing papers for people before the age of computers where you actually had to be a good typist.

I was thinking of an article I read recently in the Boston Globe about a college girl whose parents had hired a personal asst. for her at a cost of about $40 per hour. They were from LA, so I could see that if they somehow couldn't come out to help move her it, they would feel better about having some responsible adult to help her, but even after the move-in they were going to pay for this asst. to help her (or do things for her) that kids normally can do for themselves, like be her personal shopper. I think the asst. was even going to buy her some candy. My thought was "are these parents nuts?" Part of the reason to send your kid away to college is so they start learning to be adults and be responsible for themselves. This isn't going to help her grow up at all.