Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)

Devin Fuchs, Kansas City sophomore, paused before answering the question. "If I wasn't racing cars this summer, what would I be doing?" he repeated. "I probably wouldn't even get up in the morning. Or maybe I'd just be doing what everybody else is doing."

But Fuchs isn't doing what everybody else is doing. He's going to spend his summer racing modified cars for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), and not just for fun, either. Fuchs wants to do this for the rest of his life.

"The thought of having my hobby and my passion be my job...that's amazing!"

A recent study by the University of Utah shows that Fuchs is a rarity among college students; he's not going to spend his summer working in one of the top five most common summer jobs for students. Groundskeeping and Landscaping, Childcare, Food Service, Retail Sales, and General Office Work are the top five summer jobs of choice for students during the out-of-school months.

Many other KU students will abandon the typical summer job in favor of one that will further their future career. As interns, they will earn valuable experience in their chosen field.

Director of the KU Business School's Internship Program, Lisa Leroux-Smith said that over 70 of KU's business school students will receive credit for summer internships. She assumes that many more than that will be interns for the summer, but not all are seeking class credit for it.

"Internships are encouraged with all of our business students as a way to enhance a student's academic program and strengthen their experience and future employability," Leroux-Smith said. "Many of our students are offered full-time jobs with their intern companies."

That's good news for business students. But sadly, there exists no summer internship programs for racecar drivers.

Fuchs said he doesn't think badly of people that have normal summer jobs, but he does pity people his age that are struggling to find what they want to do with their lives.

"I don't understand how some people just don't have a passion for anything," Fuchs said. "I mean, I wake up every morning knowing what I want to do with my life, and I really love that."

Fuchs would get along with Bryan Richards, an Oberlin junior whose passion is making movies. Richards has been making films with his friends and family since he was in junior high school, and now he's ready to work hard at it all summer in preparation for film school.

"This summer is going to be all about padding my portfolio with new films so that I can get into a great film school. I'm just really ready to do this," Richards said. He recently finished a short film about a bank robbery that he wrote, directed, and acted in. He shot the film in his hometown of Oberlin after getting the city's permission to turn an abandoned bank building into a film set for the day.

"Right now, I'm not focusing on making money, yet. I'm just focusing on training myself," Richards said of filmaking as a career. "I'm just trying to be more creative...with no budget, getting more creative with writing and directing, and learning more of the technical stuff, too, like lighting and editing."

Richards, a professed fan of darker filmakers like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson, should get in touch with Zack Kastens, an Atwood freshman. Kastens isn't exactly spending his summer working on his "passion," but he definitely isn't in childcare or the food industry, either. Kastens lives and works in a mortuary.

"It's kind of freaky. Yeah, it wigs me out, I'm not going to lie to you," Kastens said. He took the job because of its high pay and inexpensive living arrangement. "It's a five minute walk to campus, and a ten minute walk to downtown. I'd have to be making over $1,000 a month to be able to afford this apartment on my own."

The apartment Kastens lives in is in the basement of Warren-McElwain Mortuary. He doesn't pay rent or utilities. The catch is that he has to share his living arrangement with the non-living. The embalming room is two doors down the hall, and the outside of his apartment often smells strongly of embalment. The casket showroom is right in between the file and copy room, and the storage room for cremated people that haven't been picked up, yet. Directly upstairs from Kastens' apartment is the sanctuary where memorials are held.

"I have to be careful when I have friends over," Kastens said. "We can't really be loud and crazy down here when there's a funeral going on upstairs."

Kastens admits, though, that part of the reason he took this job in the first place is to be able to tell stories someday about how he worked and lived in a mortuary during college. "If I didn't have this job, I'd just be at home all summer working on my dad's farm. I'd rather be doing this."

It's a good thing that Kastens would rather be doing this for the summer. According to his employers, summer is their busy season.

Kastens' sentiment about his strange summer activity is probably on par with Richards' feelings about making movies, and Fuchs' thoughts about driving racecars all summer. "I know this is kind of a weird job, and it's taking me a while to get used to it," Kastens said. "But I'm kind of proud to be doing something different with my summer."

video contains the following songs:

"Typical" MuteMath copyright 2006 Teleprompt Records "Devil's Haircut" Beck copyright 1996 DGC "Go Go to the Graveyard" The Deadlines copyright 2001 Tooth&Nail Records