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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My 17 year old volunteered at a museum (a smaller one far out, not at all one of the main DC ones) for two summers, worked for pay last summer and is working for pay again this summer.  She worked about once a month during the school year this year.  This summer, she's closer to full time (30-40 hours a week) and is getting extremely bored. They get school/daycare groups once or twice a week, and then it is solely walk-in customers, maybe 5 or 6 individual groups per day.  That is her primary responsibility, to welcome them to the museum, take their admission, and the do "special" activity they have that requires staff assistance.  The rest of the museum is self-guided. So, if she's working 6 or 7 hours a day, it's a LOT of downtime.  She asks for things to do, and they'll give her a project that takes maybe 30 minutes at most, and something pretty mindless like putting price tags on merchandise or stuffing envelopes, and says she feels bad asking them if there's anything she can do because they always look busy and seem to have to come up with the things she can do.  She's not had any added responsibility or enrichment since she started at the age of 14. Sometimes she brings a book or homework to do but now that it's summer, she doesn't have homework she can bring and feels bad just reading.

[b]To add salt to the wound, they just hired a girl this past winter who's two years older than her (college sophomore) and she apparently gets to plan out all the activities, attends staff meetings, works on documents and although they're technically the same position, she has much more responsibility than DD who has been there much longer.  I think that bothers DD a lot who feels like she's capable and could manage doing that kind of stuff. [/b]

So, what's appropriate in this situation?  I don't have much experience in dealing with these kinds of issues.[/quote]

But what your DD is not capable of is committing to them full time all year round.

What they need is someone like your DD to mind the museum and she does that well. That allows the rest of the staff to focus on other important areas.

In this case, the PP is right, your DD will have to take initiative and come up with something herself to do.  Social Media might be a good place to start.  Or create new materials related to the activity she does with visitors. Maybe she has noticed an exhibit that people particularly ask about and she can do some more research on that exhibit and offer to enhance some of the materials supporting it.

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