Summer is the time for beach trips, barbecues and breaks from school, but for many area college students, it is also time for work.

“This summer, I have a lot going on,” said Jabari Ashe, a student at East Carolina University.

Ashe, a former Northside High School basketball player, coaches AAU basketball with the Washington-based Team Infinite. He also works individually to train players.

Ashe said he’s excited about the players he works with, including Mikayla Boykin, who has committed to play basketball at Duke University.

In his training, Ashe uses skills learned from a lifetime of playing basketball. He didn’t have a trainer most of his career and was forced to work hard on his own to improve, he said.

“It started out as an experiment,” Ashe said. “I took one guy, worked with him a little bit and saw him increase his skill level, and I thought, ‘Hey, I could do this as a career.’”

Other college students, like Washington High School graduate Neill Jennings, are also using their summer jobs to gain experience in potential careers.

Jennings, a waiter at the newly opened Ribeyes Steakhouse on the Washington waterfront, views his summer job as a glimpse inside the business world.

“I thought it would give me the opportunity to see what a local business looks like from the inside,” Jennings said.

Jennings, a business management major at ECU, believes that waiting tables will help with his people skills and give him other valuable career tools.

“I enjoy learning from my boss — seeing how to run a business, taking some things I like and adding them to my repertoire as I go on in life, Jennings said.

He also appreciates the chance to interact with the community.

“I like seeing people that I knew growing up,” he said. “I’ve seen several people that I know, and they’re always happy to see me back in Washington for the summer.”

Though Jennings found work at home, Washington High School graduate and UNC-Chapel Hill rising sophomore Erin Lewis’ summer plans have taken her elsewhere.

Lewis is an orientation leader at the university and will live in Chapel Hill for most of the summer. She will undergo 10 days of training and begin leading groups in July.

“It allows for me to share how much I love Carolina with new students,” she said in a phone interview. “I get the most joy from being able to share the things that I find so great and offering some perspective to new students coming in.”

Lewis plans to use the money she earns this summer to pay for her college.

“My goal is to save as much as I can, so that my junior and senior year, I won’t have to take any loans at all,” she said.

Lewis said she wants to become a lawyer and eventually run for public office: “Hopefully, I’ll be president of the United States, but I’ll settle for Supreme Court justice.”