I loved my college hotel jobs. I was a valet at a nice resort during the busy AZ seasons. Great cash. Got some exercise running for cars. And hotels seem to attract weird people and funny stories.

We're hiring a lot of Summer Reading Club helpers these days.

Or how about landscaping?

I worked in the garden center of a landscaping company. Got to water plants in the nursery, haul things around, even drive a little bobcat. It was pretty fun, and I got tan and buff.

ditto landscaping; bonus: will give you bulgy muscles with which to impress the chicas.

bike messenger!

oooh, and: lifeguard!

*makes with the groucho marx eyebrows*

When I was in college (back in the previous century), I worked two summers on a golf course as a caddy. Then, two summers ago (35 years later), I worked as a starter/ranger on a golf course while recovering from shoulder surgery. Perhaps you can tell I like hanging out around golf courses.

It's probably not too late to apply for internships at your local newspapers. You're a journalism student, yes? Get the e-mail address of the city editor at your local daily, and the e-mail addresses of the editors of your local weeklies.

For the dailies, you'll generally earn about $75 per story. For the weeklies, you'll get about $50 per story. If you've got a car, you can easily freelance the summer away, getting some good clips for down the road. And making some good connections for jobs when you get out of school.

Newspapers generally don't have their interns do filing; it's a waste of everyone's time. You'd end up writing three to five stories a week.

And even if you're not making a ton of money, your mom will be ever so proud of you for having a "real" job while you're still in school.

When I was in college, I worked in one-hour photo labs. It was a lot of fun, actually. Unfortunately, it was indoors and under fluorescent lights.

I think the landscaping is a really good idea. Plus, once you have experience, it's something you'll always be able to get a job doing. And trust me, that's a very, very good thing. It will be an especially good thing over the next few years.

Holy crap. I never thought of my college days as being "back in the previous century.

I very much did NOT need that in my head.

I loved my summers - worked at a summer camp as a counselor and then administrator. Many of my friends did some similar things. You can drive a van for European travelers to the US. You can work at an outdoor adventure program. You could join the corps of people who work in the National Parks for the summer. You can work on a boat - an education schooner or tourist daysailer.

There were many advantages to these jobs for me.
-I learned skills like kayaking, canoeing, camping, drinking
-I lived away from home in a beautiful outdoor location
-I met a bunch of interesting people around my own age
-the job experience was useful
-It was hard to spend money, so I went home with a chunk of change in a lump sum each year

Park ranger.

I have an in (FoaF) with the Cape Cod Jr. Lifeguard program, but it's ages 13-16.

I just want to point out that babysitters in the northern Chicago suburbs earn between $10-$14 an hour. According to my city friends, this is also the going rate downtown. A high school girl will be on the lower end of the scale; a college student will earn the bigger bucks. It may not be glamorous but it pays well. Find a few families and set up standing times (every Saturday night or whatever) and then word gets out that there's a good sitter. You'll be busy and it's easier to keep kids happy in the summer when you can go to the park or the pool. Plus you'll almost certainly be paid cash daily. We come home from the occasional dinner out and our sitter goes home $40 richer after watching our cable, eating our food and hanging out while our baby sleeps.

I'm not saying it's the greatest job but just something to think about.

What I did during summer in college:

For two summers I read electric meters in Truckee, CA. (Totally awesome, but kind of an unusual circumstance)
Lived in Denver for a summer helping my brother remodel a house.
Worked for wineries in Napa. Again, totally awesome, but I was into that.

One of my brothers worked for the concessionaire at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. He had a fantastic time. Great idea if you're into the nature thing.

I was always good at summer jobs all through my schooling from Jr High on. I was a bit of an entrepreneur at an early age and was the oddjob kid for people. Wash windows, paint buildings, mow lawns, dogsit... you name it, I could do it.

Also, the summer camp thing is good too. I worked on the staff of a camp at Lake Tahoe for a summer. We got paid a lump sum at the end of the summer. Had a great time, amd lived in a great place. Sigh, to be young again...

head to career services and see what jobs your school might have over the summer; they tend to be interesting and out here pay $15+/hour

There's always phone sales.

*ducks and runs*

My favourite summer job was working as a hire-a-stupidstudent at a women's arts group in Alberta, doing research for and helping to organize their first conference. (The province paid part of the wages for non-profit groups who hired students over the summer.) I got to talk to artists all over the province (mostly on the phone--no, it didn't come with a travel budget), research the latest ideas in feminism and in the arts, and joke around with the dance group downstairs, whose copier we used. It paid for shit and they took all my serious, much-thought-out suggestions (e.g., how to write a contract and why you need one, hazards in the artist's workplace) and went with Finger Painting with your Inner Child and Channelling the Goddess Within Through Amethyst Suppositories-type stuff, but hey, it was fun, and 'Conference Researcher' looked great on my resume.