Margarita's is bursting with excitement, but it's just another Sunday night for Wade Kimborough '05. He works Thursday through Sunday at the popular Moody Street Mexican restaurant, and always at peak hours.It's one of three jobs the Denver, Colo. native is working in his first year out of Brandeis, but the former American Studies major and varsity baseball player does not feel stretched thin.

"Actually, I'm pretty happy right now," Kimborough said. "A lot of students take the year off and travel or do stuff like that. I don't have the money to do that, so it's just kind of like my year off."

Kimborough also works at Starbucks in Framingham, and spends the little extra time he has doing credit card processing work for a company based in Maine, providing local businesses with credit card processing machines. He tries to work 20 hours a week at Starbucks "because you get full benefits there for being part-time."

Monday morning, Ted Silverman '04 walks out of his Brighton apartment and gets into his BMW 3-Series. Silverman works at Cambridge Associates, which he said does "large-scale money management consulting."

Cambridge Associates (CA) does not manage the money, they only consult, but their clientele is impressive. Silverman says that 85 percent of the country's universities are clients and many accounts have $5-$25 million minimums.

"You're talking about a very select group of investors," Silverman said. "Corporations, big private families, universities and things of that sort."

The economics major worked for a different financial planning group for most of his first year out of college, but switched to Cambridge Associates because he saw more room for career advancement.

"Honestly, I found the perfect job," Silverman said of CA. "At this point I'm very happy with what I'm doing. I have a job that I can not only walk out of at the end of the day and feel like I'm doing good, but also that I feel like is a good steppingstone to business school and beyond."

Silverman said he typically works from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. at least five days a week, and that his hours can approach as many as 80 per week, "but that's only during the crunch time at the end of the quarter."

He isn't all serious though, and takes advantage of his leisure time with Brandeis friends in his apartment. His girlfriend is a senior here this year.

Silverman and Kimborough are taking much different job paths, each for his own reason. While Silverman is firm that he needs to further his education "at some point in the not too distant future," Kimborough is just as focused on building his rsum for what he really wants to do: film.

He was a film studies minor at Brandeis and as he continues to build his film portfolio-he has two short movies done, he's been working on another since December and he wants to write another screenplay-he said the advantage of staying in the area this year is his ability to utilize the connections he made here.

"There's a lot of people I can talk to and I have a ton of connections in film," he said. "I can still go back and talk to my professors. I believe Brandeis does instill a certain work ethic, but I feel that the connections are key."

Kimborough was offered a job dubbing sound for a film in New York after graduating, but didn't take it because he did not want to live there.

Silverman, who plans on going to business school after a couple years of working, echoes a similar sentiment about the importance of connection.

"Submit your rsum to as many places as you can," he advises future Brandeis alumni. "But also talk to people around you who you know who are in similar industries, or even similar segments of the market. People that you know are going to be the best connections that you have. That's the most powerful tool you have."

Silverman also said that being a Brandeis alumnus can quickly provide the basis for a strong reputation.

"It definitely helped by having Brandeis on my rsum, as well as dealing with the fact that I'm used to being around kind of the upper echelon of college students... a lot of the people I work with are from Ivy League schools."

Kimborough also lives in Brighton and said he has no regrets about not taking the job in New York, even with the strain of working three jobs. He could have taken office jobs after Brandeis thanks to internships he did during school, but he feels better with his makeshift "year off."

"It's a lot of fun," he said of living in Brighton. "I just want to save up money, and have fun while I'm still in the area.