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Career Discovery with a High School Senior

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Careerzing talked with Kelly Horner, a Senior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Florida. Kelly has taken several steps on her journey to discover her career interests. In our interview, she shares her experiences with us and offers advice to others who want to do the same thing.

You’re a senior in high school now and you’re thinking about your career. When did you start doing things to discover your career interests?

I always liked science and math so I decided to go into the biotech academy as a freshman. In my sophomore year I started thinking about biotechnology as a career. During my junior year I wanted to do a summer program related to the field and decided on Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida working with a professor in a laboratory in the biomedical college. I thought that would be a good way to find out if I liked research.

What did you find out?

I realized that spending five hours in a lab was a lot different than spending an hour in the lab in school. With lab work you’re definitely going to be indoors all day. You’re working alone and not as part of a team necessarily. You have multiple projects going on at the same time. and they could last years on end. You have a lot of failures; very few successes. The preparation time is much longer than the actual experiment.

Obviously, there are things I didn’t like about it. I don’t think the rewards were enough to satisfy me as a full-time job. The lady I was working with was really excited about the results of what we did. I, on the other hand, didn’t find myself really loving what came out of it. It was true what she told me - kids who go into research are expecting to be working at a fast pace, when it’s really not like that. Any lab experience I’ve had in the past has been in the high school classroom where you have one lab per class. Classroom labs are designed to be successful and give you results that are interesting to you.

What made you pick the biotech academy?

The biotech academy combined three different things: biology, chemistry and engineering. Because I really like science, I thought it would be a good fit for me. I thought even though biotech sounds specific there are so many different interests that you can pursue. If you have an interest in science you can find something interesting in biotech.   Other academies were very specific and I didn’t want to commit myself so narrowly. But I still wanted to find something that I could use to discover my career interests. The Biotech academy was brand new when I joined. My teacher was talking about all the technology they were putting into the program and my high school was making investments in a new facility and labs.

What kind of reading material do you get at home that helps you with your career exploration?

I get Scientific American – I signed up for that about a year ago.

I also use my textbooks – the ones in biotech actually have career profiles in them. The internet is good because you can look at any college site and read about their offerings. But sometimes it’s hard to find good stuff on the internet too. There’s so much to shuffle through.

How has the magazine helped you?

I like Scientific American because it has in-depth articles that give you an insight into research. It’s not glamorized. It doesn’t have a lot of ads. In a way, that’s a good thing that they take their research seriously. You get to really learn about things in depth. They will actually tell you what the results of experiments are. They also tell you their whole protocol. With other magazines they just give you little blurbs. Scientific American is well organized. I think it’s commissioned by a university.

You also spent time on the FAU campus. What did you do there?

Because there are so many different colleges on campus, I tried to make contacts with the people who were available to me. I talked to a graduate student in mechanical engineering. He was working on renewable energy resources and the mechanics that make that work. He was working on developing solar panels for the lab. He was also developing fuel cells. He ordered the parts to make it all work and developed new techniques to make it more efficient. The mechanical part of it wasn’t as interesting to me as the biology and chemistry or molecular part.

Who else did you talk to at FAU?

On the other side of my interests, I talked to a lady who was doing GIS systems. She gave me a brief description of what she was working on.  It was computer-oriented mapping and it was really interesting. I became interested in geography in my AP Human Geography class in my freshman year of H.S.

Tell me some of the other things you’ve done that helped you.

I know it sounds like a strange way to explore career interests but I went to a community hearing with county officials where they discussed adding a new turnpike entrance near the road that we live on. I have always found transportation and environmental issues interesting. I also find community meetings interesting because you see how the issues play out with a large group of people. Government officials working on the project have to meet with the people to find out what they are complaining about. I don’t know why but I find that whole scenario interesting – what the people have to say and how the officials explain things and deal with the public’s concerns.

How does your interest in the community meetings connect with biotech and lab work?

It’s the opposite extreme. You’re going out and visiting the community and the sites where things are taking place.

So did the lab work and what you found out about it, convince you to look at other things?

I don’t remember what came first.

I wanted to attend the community meeting to watch people in action. There were several people on the board that were delivering facts and information to the public. The people had to decide for themselves what they thought of the proposal. There was a transportation engineer, an environmental engineer, a statistician, a public relations person and the project manager. I’ve always been interested in transportation and cars. I’ve always liked traveling roads. The whole movement of people, services and goods fascinates me. It’s how everything is connected.

Were there classes in high school that piqued your interest in that?

I took AP Human geography. It was a broad subject. I found myself to be interested in certain aspect of it. I liked the idea that it had a lot to do with how people interact with their environment. That’s a big theme for me. That’s why working in a lab probably didn’t interest or fulfill me as much. I realized that I want to combine my interests in sciences and human geography when I make a career choice.

What careers do you feel combine your interests so far?

The conclusion I reached is if I want to combine science with geography I could become a civil or environmental engineer and work with biotech too. Structures, consulting on a large-scale urban planning project – something like that would be cool. That would be broad with a lot of influence how people live.

You also visited the Scripps facility in south Florida. Tell us about that.

Scripps was cool. Their facility is super high- tech. The people there covered a lot of different departments. I didn’t know if I would like working at Scripps since it was centered on DNA, genetics and the human body. I wasn’t as interested in that as I am in with how biotech affects the environment. There are four different specialties in biotech. Scripps fits into the pharmaceutical research area – very high-end research. They are specialized and have a lot of funding.

When you were at Scripps what did you specifically do to learn more about it.

Well I was talking to several different lab specialists. They explained what they were studying in their departments. Certain areas were interesting and others, not so much.

It sounds like you took the initiative to go to people and talk to them. And going to the city meeting as well, what did you do there?

After the community hearing was over, I went up to every single person on the panel and asked them what they do. I told them that I wanted them to explain their job because I was genuinely interested in their work. I really liked what I saw there. I felt that in their work they were getting in touch with people and using their technical expertise at the same time. They were all very passionate about the subject.

Were they interested in talking to you?

Yes - The same with the people at Scripps and FAU. They all wanted to explain what they do. They liked sharing their experiences. Some of them admitted to me the downside of their work. Some of them admitted that the decisions they made in their choice of study might have been different if they could have done it over again. Maybe they decided that the major they chose wasn’t the best one for their work.

What I’m doing is looking at the end result - a career choice - not just what I want to study. The thing is that I know that I’m interested in so many things. It’s hard to identify the ones that have major significance to me. It’s more important to work backwards and find out where I want to end up in the end. Then define how to get there. So first I find my end result. That consisted of talking to people who are at that end result and find out how they got there. What were they interested in what I am interested in? Find out where the connections are.

For instance, at the city meeting, the mechanical engineering guy was more interested in doing things like building and construction.

And you know a mechanical engineer really, really well, don’t you? (Kelly’s Dad is a mechanical engineer!)

Yes, I do.

And do you have the same interests that he had when he was a boy?

No - For the most part.

ME would be one thing you probably wouldn’t go into?

Probably not, but it was still worth talking to the mechanical engineer on the panel. I just didn’t really make a connection to what he did. But that’s not really fair to say, because it’s always good to expand your knowledge. In biotech I learned so much about that area. Now I can walk into a lab and I know so much that an average person on the street wouldn’t know. I can identify the instruments and how to use them. So a conversation with anyone will give you valuable insight.

Tell me about a couple of other things that you’ve done in the last few weeks that have helped you explore.

I talked to my Human Geography teacher that I had in my freshman year and I told him about my interests. I told him I was thinking about exploring urban planning. I could see the connection with Human Geography to that field. He emailed some geography professors that he met around the country. He asked them to provide me with advice on how I can learn more about the field. I did hear from one of them so far. He gave me advice on what subjects I should study, where I should go to get the best jobs, and some masters program he recommended. Overall, my teacher was really helpful.

You also talked with a career counselor. What did you get out of that meeting?

Well I got to ask a lot of questions about different careers. I asked questions about what I would need to study to get into various careers.  

What was that person able to do for you?

He suggested that I contact professionals in the fields I was interested in. He also gave me different college websites to check out for information on their curriculum. In general, he was able to give me some focus so that I didn’t waste a lot of time searching for resources. He already connected me to the good ones.

So did you look at the different curriculum and course work?

Yes. He gave me websites to go to – especially national professional society websites that give you a ton of information about the whole field. That helped a lot.

You recently met with a professional with a background in urban planning.  Can you tell us about that meeting?  Who was she and what did you learn from her?

The professional I talked to was my classmate's mother. She described her whole career as an urban planner, including her college experiences and degrees earned. She shared with me the enjoyable and irritating parts of her job, the many career paths one can take in the field and the best college majors that lead to it. She showed me many helpful websites and even offered pamphlets on her work and relevant magazines. This experience was vital to helping me decide whether this was the route I wanted to take - and if I should spend my time on it.

You also have a brother who is majoring in Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. How did he help you?

One of the things recommended to me by the people on the city panel was to go into civil engineering. Now that I’m considering that field, there are specializations that I’m exploring. The school that he goes to is maybe one that I’ll be interested in too. So I might follow his foot steps.

Has CareeZing helped you?

Yes, because I’ve looked at the profiles. I got to read about the different jobs people have. Some people explain how they didn’t have a straight course to their current job or career. Some people have jobs that were specific to their field of study and others have very interesting combinations. Maybe they switched their college major and ended up in a place they never expected. And some of them were entrepreneurs. Careerzing doesn’t just zero in on a certain career or job– but it tells about the personal journey of a real person. It’s more realistic. You can tell if someone really loves their job or hates it.

How does that differ from just searching on the internet to find a job description?

It tells you how hopeful you can be about finding something in the end of your discovery. You have to be realistic about getting a job after you decided to be a literature major or psychology major. Like in urban planning - in order to get a job in it you have to be extremely competitive. You have to have the best qualifications and be super well rounded. If you study engineering and come out with a degree in it, you are more likely to get a job directly in that. It’s a more direct route than urban planning.

What kind of advice would you give other kids looking for their career?

The best thing I did was talking to people in the careers I was interested in. It’s not like you have to go very far out of your way either. They just might be your teacher, or it could be one of your friend’s parents or your own parents or someone your parents work with. You might end up at a meeting like I did. I was invited to that meeting because it was in my community.

But you took the initiative to go to it.

Right. If you’re interested in a particular thing and there are events going on in your community or you find someone in a job or a project that interests you, you should take advantage of those resources. Opportunities are all around you – at the mall, the doctor’s office, at your school.

 

Well, thanks for speaking with careerzing! We enjoyed it!

Thank you.

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