How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Teen Grid Resident Ming Chen

"For most of society an important milestone in normal teenage development is the concept of the first job. My story begins here...

First, let me introduce myself. I am a somewhat normal, unemployed seventeen-year-old senior in a small town in East Tennessee. I have taken all of the math and science classes at my 1200+ student high school by my junior year, so it would technically be an understatement to call me a straight-up nerd.

The summer began and my requirement of four novels started the next day. Two months pass and my parents begin to wonder if I would ever get a job (the normal bossy, pushy parent-type behavior). Soon enough, I landed a job at McDonalds at $6.35 an hour with a fixed 20 hour schedule. My mission: to prepare food at its "highest" quality and to provide "service with a smile" three days a week. I had to fill out the forms required so I would be paid by check every two weeks, which included a one time copy of my driver's license, social security card, and birth certificate. Making a long story short, they lost the copy three times and a "white flag" was raised by the very parents that forced me into the job. I lasted 36 hours.

At this point, I have entered the third year in the massive multiplayer "platform" called Second Life. I know every little trick, function, event, and state of the Linden Scripting Language and can make objects do just about anything. I have been known to script cars, boats, robots, simple "operating systems", tools, and gadgets mostly to further my knowledge of how much 'umph' this programming language can provide. As an added bonus, this allows me to create products I can sell to other Residents.

Recently [in Second Life], in 36 hours, I made about USD$210. During the week I worked, and the following week, I made about L$120,000 which increased my income an extra USD$400. At this point I made about the same amount per week in Second Life that I did at my 20 hour per week job. The best part about my virtual store is I don't have to be logged into Second Life in order to manage it; the system does it for me automatically. I logged in those two weeks for about 15 hours total, and of that I spent about 15 minutes answering questions. If you do the math, I made USD$26 an hour sitting at my computer chair and playing around. For the rest of the time I sat and read my four assigned novels. Also a plus; Total time to receive checks from McDonalds: 17 days. Time for LL to transfer over my USD to a bank account: 4 days."

While Ming Chen's story is not the norm, it's certainly not uncommon. Some teens use their Second Life earnings to pay for the real life things they want, and some spend the L$ in-world on cool stuff. Others reinvest their earnings to expand their business or purchase land. Whether by scripting, building, texturing or offering services, many teens are finding that starting their own Second Life business beats the heck out of the average McJob.