hi there, I saw a post you made under the job corps tag, and had a question. I was just wondering what it’s like living there on campus, what the dorms are like, the food, if there are any activities/field trips, and what weekends are like. i’m most likely gonna join job corps and might live on campus. thank you for reading :)
Hey! Thanks for asking! I’m going to start with a disclaimer that one, every center is different, two, it’s been close to exactly four years since I graduated, and three, I’m also asking input from two of my brothers (we ALL went to job corps at different centers! so we have a pretty wide range of experiences)! Oh, and for those who may just see this in the tag, my goal is to be as unbiased as possible because there’s so much hate for this program and it’s not all true… but neither are all the promises a recruiter makes, y’know?
So one thing that is commonly said about Job Corps, at least at the center I was at and the center one of my brothers is as, is that it’s a mixture of high school, college, the military, and prison. Living on campus is odd… if you’re a minor, you may find you have a lot more freedom than before, but if you’re an adult you have a lot less. Since the JC system serves people ages 16-24, they treat everyone like they’re 17 years and 364 days old or so… old enough to take care of things yourself but not an adult yet. This is important because it dictates literally everything about center life (we call them centers instead of campuses a lot of the time) and it can make or break you. If you’re over eighteen and can’t get over the lack of freedom, it’ll ruin you. If you can swallow your pride, you can actually have a great time. It’s like going to boarding school, really (confirmed with friends of mine who have in fact gone to boarding school and who I’ve shared experiences with).
Almost everything varies from center to center, dorm life included. If you can, find out who’s in charge of your center. I went to a Forest Service Job Corps, and that’s one of the “bad” kinds, along with Department of Labor centers. If you’re lucky, you’ll be in a contracted center. The difference in dorms is the amount of people and how nice they are. My center’s dorms were 28 people to a “bay,” or a hall with five rooms, and four bays in a building. The biggest room could house eight, the smallest four. The beds were metal and most were bunk beds, and the floor was tile. Cinderblock walls, metal lockers for storing our things. It was almost prisonlike in the rooms, but we had a comfy common area with rugs and couches and could drag our blankets out and make it pretty okay. At my brother’s contracted center, the largest rooms house four people and many only house two. I’ve seen pictures of normal beds with wooden frames, dressers, and carpets. So really, it depends on the experience, but it’s always what you make of it!
You probably won’t spend a lot of time in the dorm besides sleeping. All centers have some form of recreation available on campus for students. Mine had a video game room, a movie room, a large gymnasium, workout room, and sports fields, arts and crafts building, and a pool hall… one of my brothers goes to a center with a computer lab and a library as well. Some centers have a thing that students often call “mandatory fun” where you MUST participate in recreational activities for so many hours a month, so be aware of that. Luckily, clubs often spring up. I was involved in writing club and tabletop roleplaying game club. One of my brothers is currently on his center’s safety patrol, and the other is in his center’s military club. As you can see, there’s a wide variety of clubs, and at least at my center, forming more is easy provided there’s interest. I promise you that if you want to get involved, there’s always something to do.
There are definitely trips. If your center is In The Middle of Nowhere (mine was), people will literally go wild to get off campus. We had Walmart trips every Thursday and the bus was always packed… you had to get in line to sign up early or you’d miss it. Same with field trips (ours did those every Saturday). They’re free trips and excuses to get off center and have some fun! In my time at JC, I went to movies, laser tag, horseback riding, tours of a nearby national park… all sorts of things. Certain clubs and activities (such as student government, fire team, or safety patrol) also offer opportunities to get off center. As SGA president, I often got pulled out of class. Job Corps centers sometimes have biannual leadership conferences that’s basically a week of camp for people in SGA, so I got to travel from Kentucky to Virginia and spend a week learning leadership skills in the outdoors, even! That said, sometimes they really are no fun. See if your center has a schedule of what’s coming up, and when sign ups come, sign up QUICK. Also, here’s a hint… Walmart trips aren’t always worth it. Your center probably has a thriving black market of students who are willing to sell you basically anything you need or want. Note that this is super not allowed, but everyone does it anyway. Hell, I was student president and I sold candy on the DL. Just don’t wave it in the faces of any authority figures.
Weekends vary. Often, they function as normal free time (see above with recreation, trips, etc). Once you’ve been on center long enough (it’s either four or six weeks I think, at least at the center I was at) you can take Weekend Pass (given you’re over 18 or have parental permission), which means you get to leave center for the weekend. It’s a popular option for those who have the money and means. In the middle of nowhere, taking pass is hard, but if you’re in an urban center it’s a great way to take a day trip alone. For the most part, people at my center under 21 used pass to go see parents. The ones over 21 got a hotel and got super drunk. If you’re going on pass with friends, be careful and safe. Legal trouble can get you booted from the program.
Now for the food. Much as dorms are different depending on who runs the center, food’s different depending on that and what trades are offered. If your center has a culinary program? You’re likely going to eat real well. If not, it goes again to who runs the center. At my Forest Service center, the food was like higher quality school lunches, so if you can stomach that, you were fine. For my contracted center brother, he has really nice meals all the time. My brother at a DoL center says the food is basically “high class MREs.” If you’re not feeling the food, use some of your allowance to stock up on ramen, instant rice dinners, or anything like that, or turn to the black market, or your school store. Note that while meals are free, though, those options cost money.
Last thing (unless you have more questions in which case TOTALLY feel free to ask) isn’t something you asked, but is nice to know… you’ll get an allowance of $25 every two weeks that raises to $35 biweekly after a certain point (6 months??). There’s more ways to make money, though. Some centers pay for students to do extra kitchen duty over whatever the center requires. SGA often pays, as it counts as a job. Some centers will allow students to do work-study, or to get part time jobs after classes conclude. There’s also that black market (and as wifi is government based and therefore lots of things are blocked or monitored, getting a wifi hotspot and selling time on it can make BANK. But you didn’t hear that from me).
Anyway, I hope that helped. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck!
