Bishop O’Dowd never fails when it comes to setting a growing student for future success. Aside from academics, the school thinks about potential careers and opportunities that any student can have. How do they focus on that? By hosting an annual day where 11th graders are surrounded by panels and guest speakers across industries, and given the opportunity to ask any questions they have for professionals.
Anjelica Tynes organizes the event each year and gives behind-the-scenes details that lead up to the event and its purpose.
When it comes to what students can expect when walking into career day, Ms. Tynes explained, “Students attend an opening session which includes an alumnae serving as the keynote speaker,” who provides insight into their career journey from O’Dowd. After the speaker, students attend two 55-minute sessions where they can ask questions to the speaker.
The main goal of Career Day is to have students “leave the event with another building block on their career pathway.” These blocks can mean a lot for many different students, whether it be “clarity in next steps to pursue a career they are extremely passionate about,” simple “clarification on misconceptions about a career,” further insight on a newly interesting career, or even “Inspiration and hope about their future,” Tynes detailed.
After the event, there are hopes for further improvement that can be applied to the next year. Ms. Tynes hopes to create more sessions that meet students’ needs, explaining she would “love to provide everyone the chance to speak with someone from their career interest, but due to professionals’ availability and campus spacing, we have to limit the sessions.” However, she hopes that next year’s event can include the speakers unable to attend, and include them in the campus’s Industry Insights. Industry Insights are smaller sessions during club/office hours, where students learn about a certain career through conversations with the professional.
Career Day takes a lot of hard work, far in advance, to be made possible. In the fall semester, juniors fill out a career cluster interests survey, and the top 3-5 career clusters are used to select the topics for the event. Then, industry professionals are recruited through various networking methods, such as O’Dowd’s Weekly, cold-calling, or verbal recommendations. Once sessions are created, counselors visit US History classes a month in advance, and in the week prior, students can expect a Schoology post containing session topics and descriptions. Students can then choose two sessions and two alternate choices. A few days before, Schoology posts with further details on presenters are presented, along with ways to get the most from Career Day. The day before, they are sent their session selection.
Career Day is additionally made possible by the Counseling Department, Custodial Teams and Facilities, Development Team, Living Lab Team, Volunteers Compliance Team, Teachers, Campus Safety, Staff, and everyone else involved in making the event possible.
As O’Dowd juniors begin looking toward college and adulthood, Career Day gives students the opportunity to hear directly from professionals and imagine themselves following similar paths one day.
