On April 23, sophomores will be able to attend the Blair County Rotary Career Fair. Students attending will eat A lunch, then go to the field house to board buses and leave for the fair, returning at approximately 2:30 p.m.
Counselors hope learning about a particular career will help students make more informed choices.
“[It] may answer some questions because until we learn more about a potential career, we may know the surface level of a particular career job, but we don’t know the real particulars of that career,” Counselor Drew Yingling said. “Learning more about it can really hone our focus on trying to achieve that and gain that career, or, ‘hey, this is nothing like I thought it was going to be, so I want to do maybe something else.’”
The careers that students explored at last years’ fair gave them a background as to what those careers entail.
“It was really interesting to see how everything plays out, and especially because I’m not very decided on my career, it was good to get a variety of outlooks and the realistic expectations for [a] future career,” junior Skylar Irwin said.
Students who already have an idea of what they hope to become in the future could get a better understanding of a career through people who currently work in that field.
“I hope to find something in my career because I want to be an engineer and architect,” sophomore Cadderly Ickes said. “I hope that [the] career fair can help me boost into that field and get a good start.”
The Rotary Career Fair offers many career choices.
“There are probably about 100 different career choices from audio visual things to engineers to military to construction to psychologists, doctors, law enforcement, scientists, musicians; it’s a wide variety of careers,” Yingling said.
The Rotary Career Fair exposes students to new things.
“It gave me more thoughts about what I wanted [for] my future, because I’m so set in stone with what I wanted to do prior to therapy,” junior Emilee Vo said. “Then, it made me realize that there’s so many other things that I could be passionate about, rather than what my parents want for me or what I thought I wanted for myself.”
The different outlooks and careers that Blair County has to offer give students other pathways to consider in case they divert from their original path.
“I hope to find something that I would look forward to in my future,” sophomore Heaven Williams said. “Mainly, I would be looking for nursing, but this fair would help me see if there’s anything else I would like to explore.”
According to Yingling, students should expect to listen to a presentation when they arrive. The presentation will talk about job applications, available opportunities in Blair County and then students will proceed to the four careers they chose.
“It’s a really nice opportunity for people to be able to listen and glean information from someone who’s actually in that field and working and has worked in that field,” Yingling said.
