The good, the bad, the nasty

"Drop your cocks, and grab your socks: It's time to saddle a mule."\nThat is the cry that sophomore Mary Solecki heard every summer morning in her outdoor tent cabin from Wayne, a rough and tumble, 60-year-old cowboy who was one of the lead mule drivers at Yosemite National Park in California.\n"I love Wayne," said Solecki. "He looked like the Marlboro Man and always chewed tobacco and was the nicest guy. He would always hug me in the morning and ask, 'How's it going Mary?' in that voice of his. I loved the people I worked with. They were so down to earth and laid back." \nYosemite National Park hired Solecki for a summer to be a guide packer. She took care of horses, led trail rides and helped out with pack trips. She was one of many IU students whose summer jobs turned out to be one of the best, worst or most disgusting experiences in their lives.\nSolecki did not expect to get the job. She downloaded an application off the Internet on a whim. She was completely shocked when she was told she had been hired. \n"I felt like I was in a dream when I got the job. I could never imagine in a million years that I could have got a job like that," said Solecki.\nSolecki lived all summer with a roommate in a small tent cabin, a hut with a solid floor and canvas walls. Surrounding her cabin were massive mountains, gushing waterfalls and crystal clear lakes. One thing she noticed was that the weather was always the same: dry, no clouds and temperatures in the 70s or 80s. \n"The first time I saw a cloud in four months was when I got back to Indiana. You would go to sleep hearing nature all around you and the sound of waterfalls crashing. I never watched TV while I was there," Solecki said smiling.\nBecause of her job, Solecki was often forced to lead large teams of horses up and down small trails with little or no help.\n"It was a nerve-racking, risky job sometimes," said Solecki. "We would have to ride on trails in the mountains that were only two feet wide with first-time riders. One wrong step and you would drop one thousand feet straight down. And people were often too busy looking at the scenery that they didn't look where they were going on these trails."\nOn these rides she befriended people from all over the world, even getting job offers to work at places such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, England, France and Germany. \nBecause of the setting and the people, Solecki learned a lot about herself and life.\n"I lived with cowboys," she said. "They would sit around the fire at nights drinking whiskey and talk about life. I learned so much from them." \nShe related what other lessons she learned too. "When I first saw my roommate, I thought to myself, 'We are not going to get along at all.' But the more I got to know her, the closer we got. That taught me to never judge someone on first impressions." \nSolecki did such a good job that the park managers at Yosemite offered the same position next summer.\nWhile Solecki got her dream job last summer, freshman Chris Waggoner got a job far from it.\nOriginally hired to be a mascot at the oldest railroad in the United States, the Strasburg Pennsylvania railroad, Waggoner only did that job for two days until he was put to work as a janitor for $6 an hour, where he had to clean the trains' bathrooms.\n"The first day I was on the job, my co-worker was explaining to me how disgusting and scary women were. I didn't believe him though," said Waggoner.\nEven though Waggoner didn't believe his co-worker at first, he soon found out through firsthand experience.\n"The women's bathrooms were disgusting," Waggoner explained, "because they would leave toilet paper and used tampons and stuff like that all over the place. \n"The men's bathrooms were fine. All they ever needed was a quick look over."\nWaggoner also found out how vicious some of the women could be when they tried to close the bathrooms to clean them.\n"They were scary because whenever we would close the bathrooms there would be a long line of 15 angry women waiting outside," Waggoner said. "We tried to close the women's bathroom one day and this one woman comes up, looks at the sign 'bathroom closed.' Then she moves the sign out of the way and walks in. That's the way they acted. When we closed the bathrooms these nice middle-aged women would just chew us out for trying to do our job. It happened every day."\nOne student found a summer job that was more than slightly disgusting. Freshman Cheryl Wolfe worked the summer at the amusement park Cedar Point as a ride host for the Mantis. She lived in the park with her co-workers in a dorm. On her days off, Wolfe roamed the park, riding whatever rides she wanted.\nBut Wolfe's job was not all fun and games. People had a habit of regurgitating on the ride, which Wolfe had to clean up.\n"Our record for people puking in one day was six. It was a mix of people who got on the ride and were nervous and puked or people who rode the ride and puked when they got off," said Wolfe.\nAfter a while it almost became a contest with her co-worker and her about judging the types of vomit.\n"We rated the pukes by distance, amount, color and what was in it. One puke I remember distinctly was bright orange and had pieces of lettuce floating around in it," said Wolfe. "Green was a common color, and lots of chunks were common, too."\nIt got so bad that Wolfe finally started announcing to people who were getting on the ride, "It's just like swimming, don't ride until 30 minutes after you ate"