Picture this: an Ursuline student rushes out of school, scrambling to arrive on time to practice, comes home exhausted after practice and immediately begins her homework, stopping only for a few Snapchat and Instagram breaks. After finishing her homework, she checks her phone, and her app, Nexdoor, alerts her that a neighbor is in need of a dog sitter who will take twenty minutes out of her day to walk, feed, and play with the dog. “Perfect,” she thinks, “this is such an easy way to earn money!.” She proceeds to connect with her neighbor through the app and begins working as a dog sitter, a job that will only take up about twenty minutes of each day.
As Ursuline students, our schedules are consistently packed with homework and studying, numerous extracurricular activities, social life and different responsibilities. We have gotten used to the constant running around from activity to activity and most of us do not have time to have a job and make money, although we always have time to spend money. Some students choose to earn their money during the summer as lifeguards, working in boutiques, or other jobs around Dallas.
However, as soon as summer comes to an end, so do job opportunities as the bombardment of school and other activities overwhelm students’ schedules leaving them no option, , but to limit their hours or stop earning money at a job completely. The obvious solution to this problem is the easy jobs such as babysitting or dog sitting which only take up a few hours a week, and hardly impact busy schedules.
Nevertheless, these types of neighborhood jobs can be difficult to attain because they are given through hearsay of friends or other inconsistent means. The app, Nextdoor, helps to solve this issue of procuring neighborhood jobs, ideal for an over-scheduled Ursuline student through a simple posting system to an individual’s neighborhood account to all members of a neighborhood.
According to the app’s description on the Apple App Store, Nextdoor is “the free, private social network for your neighborhood. It is the best way for you and your neighbors to hear what is happening in your local community. When neighbors start talking, good things happen.”
When asked if she used and enjoyed the app, Michaela Coulter ’20 said, “I loved it, I was able to post an ad in under five minutes and give a little info about myself and people would either private message me or call me. My sister and I still babysit for one family consistently that we were connected with on Nextdoor.”
Not only is the app easy to use for finding neighborhood jobs to earn money simply, but it also adds a personal and private aspect to looking for jobs because the posts are limited to members of a specific neighborhood, preventing students from working for random people in faraway neighborhoods.
The individuality of the Nextdoor app allows for hopeful babysitters or dog-walkers to interact solely with people within their neighborhoods, increasing the likelihood and availability of jobs. The app also provides employers with a sense of security knowing that they can call the potential babysitters and get to know them before making the decision to hire.
“I was even connected to someone who lived in our old house who wanted me to babysit,” says Michaela, illustrating the familiarity of the app.
Along with the ability to post about babysitting and other jobs, Nextdoor enables members of neighborhoods to alert each other about crime, lost pets, weather, service provider recommendations, neighborhood events, as well as connect with members of an individual neighborhood.
Nextdoor acts as a simple resource for over-scheduled high schoolers who are searching for a simpler means to earn money without working a full-time job, allowing students to maintain their busy schedules of extracurricular activities and homework.
