Former Employees, how has CP help your careers now?

Get out Nate. Good for you. Congratulations.

To most people it would seem that Cedar Point isn't going to help me at ALL in my future career, since I'll be going in to the research aspect of science and ecology, and what does pushing buttons at roller coasters have to do with that? But I know better, I know that a summer spent at Cedar Point can teach you a lot about work ethic, dealing with unfortunate situations, working on a team, hierarchies, favoritism, spirit, long hours, and so many other things. It also teaches you that there is a fine line between having fun WHILE WORKING and just plain having fun. I know that I'll use my experiences from the summer in whatever job I end up in, and it will just make me that much better of a worker.

I'm now a high school teacher at an inner city school. Working at Cedar Point has taught me some important life skills that help me to remain sane:

(a) how to remain cool in the face of stressful situations and how to de-escalate possibly worse problems (two kids arguing violently, for example),
(b) how to deal with a variety of things going on at once and be sure that you're in control of all of them,
and
(c) how to keep one's own life detached from work even though it seems at times that work is all there is to life. ^_~

Teaching rules, by the way! ^_^ (and inner city kids are super. Don't let the TV fool you.)

~"Miss Morse"~

It gave me an alcohol problem and a heck of alot of memories!

To kind of reiterate, being in the positions I was in at CP and dealing with people day in and day out has helped me immensley in my job, doing logistics for a major auto plant. It's high stress, high pressure. Working as a TL helped a lot in getting myself more organized, able to make quicker decisions about things, just overall, put me in a position to do good things.

As for Paddlewheel, which is still near and dear to my heart. It taught me that its ok to laugh when you make mistakes, and though I'm not slamming boats into the dock or buzzing geese anymore (there are days when i miss it). I learned mostly through my TL and ATL, Matt and Josh how to bring people together and work as a good team.

I miss Cedar Point, being out of it for 3 years now I can look back and say that it was a lot of BS sometimes, but now I see in the "real world" a lot of stuff is seen as BS.

I was lucky in the years I worked there with the managers and sups I had, Fike, Bob, Eddie, those guys really helped in many ways, same with Karrah, and Vinnie, Coddington, Josh, Thacker and others.

Learning how to work as a team was the best thing I took out of CP, its helped in every job I've had since.

I havent been back to the park in a couple years, I got kind of burned out after I didn't come back. This year I plan on making a weekend though, and will have to give the new PWE crew some helpful suggestions for jokes :)