Humans of NGU: Kaleb Collom
Caleb Arnold
Some students are too busy to get a job. Some can’t afford not to. Kaleb Collom, a student in the Mass Comm department, is working four jobs while studying full-time. In a typical week, he works anywhere from 20 to 25 hours, in addition to any school work he may need to do.
He started work at Lowes as a summer job, but they liked him and decided to keep him on longer. “People say their job would suck if I wasn’t there,” Collom said. At Lowes, he moves appliances and stages them for in-store pickup.
He also works as an assistant at Ignite Healthcare, which is a business owned by his family. When they need him, Collom comes in to help train Certified Nurse Assistants, or CNAs. When he graduated the program, he became the youngest CNA in South Carolina at age 14. The previous record that he broke was his brother’s, who graduated at 15.
Collom’s favorite job involves driving an Ambulance for Kadi Medical Service, also a family-owned business. Kadi is mainly a sports event service. He said that the two main reasons that this is his favorite job are that it pays well, and that people leave room for him while he drives, even when the sirens and lights are off.
He is also a work study for NGU Mass Communication instructor Lara Eller. There, he helps out in graphic design classes and graphics. Collom said about his responsibilities as a work study, “I do the graphics work that Lara doesn’t want to do.”
He said that, although he is very busy, he doesn’t feel that he is overworked. He frequently works six days in a week, but he tries to take Sunday off so that he can catch up on homework and rest a little.
