Junior Irith Katiyar is interested in a career in either Computer Science, Biology or both. As such, he chose Analytics/Artificial Intelligence, Biology Life Science and Research and Software Engineer as his preferred options for the first Career Day held at the school in five years.
Career Day takes place during an extended tutorial on March 2 and March 3.
The five most popular career choices this year are Analytics/Artificial Intelligence (Arnab Chakraborty), Bio Life Science & Research (Yvonne Linney), Software Engineer (Arush Shankar and Steve Garcia), CEO (High Tech) Entrepreneur (Haresh Patel, Dave Zinman and Nutan Malhotra) and FBI agent (Michael Gimbel).
Students took a survey regarding career interests that was open from Jan. 8-10. It allowed them to select two careers for each day, and student responses were used to assign students to specific career presentations for each day. Attending Career Day sessions will be mandatory, and teachers will receive a list of the students who will be in their classroom on each day, according to guidance secretary Kathryn Sheridan.
The careers will be from various fields, including medicine, engineering, law, business, architecture, the arts, communication and more. There will be no limit on the number of students per speaker session, and the more popular career choices will be held in larger spaces on campus such as the MAP Annex.
Student interest from the last Career Day in 2015 influenced the available career options this year.
Although the career options are similar to those from 2015, the speakers will be different. Teachers, parents and staff suggested names for speakers, which were then selected by availability to speak on March 2 and March 3.
Before 2015, Career Day used to be held every other year. After 2015, there was a transition in the administrative personnel in charge of Career Day; there were again some changes this year with previous administrative assistant Sarah Christensen moving away and Sheridan taking the position, making it difficult to organize a Career Day.
“Without that coordination, a Career Day that involves over 70 volunteer speakers, a choice for 1,350 students, and facility coordination would be impossible to pull off,” assistant principal Kerry Mohnike said.
Some students intend to use Career Day to learn about future fields, and others, about careers they would like to learn more about as a possible hobby.
Katiyar wants to explore a more realistic view for his future.
“I hope to understand a career in a STEM field, what that looks like and what you can do in the future,” he said.
Regardless of how the students plan to use Career Day, whether it is to help plan for their futures or to relax, Mohnike feels that it is important for students to be exposed to many different options for their future.
“It is important that we provide ways to introduce the wide array of career possibilities to students to get them thinking and realizing that there are more career paths than perhaps the one or two they know about,” Mohnike said.