Making Money

What’s on everyone’s mind besides partying and studying? The answer is definitely Money. We’re all students with tight budgets and parents looking over our shoulders to see how much we’re really spending. Well spending your own money is hard – at least it was for me. So here are a few ways I made a tonne of money and spent it all on myself.

Caps

The first place you should look is the caps office. The career office has about a thousand jobs including part times ones and you can select any time, date, place, type of job. All you have to do is register online and send in your CV. The best part, at least for me is that the Caps office actually helped me make my CV, and when I submitted it, I actually was accepted for over 10 jobs. Obviously, I couldn’t work them all, but I chose three and made 10$ an hour working 5 hours every three days a week. I made a total of 150$ every week which was decent. Most of the jobs were monotonous like guarding the parking area or opening the door for the cars at the Milton gates, so it was perfect for me, in the sense that I could study and I didn’t lose that precious time. Off campus jobs are harder to get because they need a really good CV and you’re always asked if you can speak French. It was okay for me, because I speak French, so during my second and third year I worked at HSBC, second cup, Tim Horton’s and the McGill library. What I found a bit weird is that they require Quebec French as the customers feel “more at home.” But I think that’s a load of crap. If you know French, you can get by.

Printing

This, I actually discovered by accident. I bought a printer at the beginning of the year, and it was really cheap – about 49$ with the cartridge and it printed 2000 copies per cartridge. So anyway, one day my friend asked me if she could print her report and that she would pay me a dollar. I think McGill charges 7 cents a copy, so you can make about 12 copies for a dollar. She had 15 sheets to print, so we obviously made a profit printing it at my place. But if you do the math, my cartridge was only 20$, so for me, each copy was only 0.01 cents. So, I made 7 times the profit. In short, I made a killing printing people’s reports, case studies and even books! That’s something you should definitely think about – but make sure you do the math perfectly before starting this business, you could get screwed over if you miss calculated.

Research and Development

Sorry about the title, it’s just that in all my classes they keep saying “research and development,” so it’s engrained in my mind. So, what is this? Basically, McGill and neighbouring Concordia are medicinal schools so they do a lot of research. Which means one thing- they need volunteers. Flyers are all over campus and you just have to spot them. The sessions are like 30 minutes to one hour and you get paid between 15$ to 50$. In a year, I probably went for about 10 tests and made 350$. Good isn’t it? You don’t even have to do anything – look at few pictures, tell them what you think; take an MRI; sing a song; taste some food; listen to music while sensors record your emotions. It’s easy money and takes barely any time. I HIGHLY recommend you do that. And don’t worry, there’s no experimental testing that’ll kill you there.