On April 5, McNicholas students participated in Career Day, an opportunity to learn more about how to prepare for a future career and to learn about what certain career paths entail.
Students were joined by those in the work force, many of whom are McNick alumni. They shared information about choosing college majors, finding a job, what to expect when joining the workforce, and the different elements that making up a successful career.
“It opened my eyes to new careers and opportunities that I never really considered,” junior Allison Young said.
McNicholas’s Career Day is held every other year and gives students the chance to see a series of speakers whose jobs correlate with topics that they may be interested in pursuing in college. Speakers this year included a graphic designer, a detective, an intervention specialist, and a clinical research director, among others. All students were part of the keynote address in the first session and then chose three other sessions with careers that were of interest to them.
Students took away many lessons from the experience, including inspirational testimonies that shed light on careers that are often overlooked, realities of the workforce, and potential career options.
The day began with a guest speaker and alumnus Kerry Trombley, Class of 2008, who discussed the importance of flexibility in the workforce, and how one should pursue something that leads to success. “We may go to college to get a certain degree, but we could end up doing something that doesn’t even relate to that degree,” senior Nate Chambers said.
Junior Mary Schuh aspires to find work in special education. Schuh said, “I feel like teachers are more important than we think they are, and a lot of students have learning disabilities so they can’t speak or things like that. I think we need more people like that [to help them].”
Some students expressed that they have not decided what career they want to pursue in the future. “I don’t know what I want to do, so for me it gave me a few more options as to what I may be interested in,” sophomore Riley Ruehlmann said.
“I think there’s a lot of careers out there that we don’t even know about or think about, so exposing ourselves to different careers we don’t pigeonhole ourselves into one area like say business,” Counselor Matt Wehrman said. “By exploring these different careers we can better prepare ourselves for a specific career path in the future.”
The McNicholas Milestone 