This is good advice and is much the same thing I tell my students. There's one other good reason to do this that goes beyond following your passion. When I worked low-wage jobs for pocket money (the only kind of jobs I could get at that age), I found that I was surrounded by people who were stuck in jobs like that. These people often had terrible attitudes about work and about the companies they worked for. Looking back, I can now see that this is why these people were stuck in low-wage jobs. But, as a student, I didn't understand that and I got infected with some of these bad attitudes and ideas -- and it took me years to really shake them. Of course, you do meet all kinds of people working those jobs, and I learned some valuable life lessons that way too. On the whole, however, I agree that you can learn more volunteering someplace interesting than workin' for the Man.