For Career Day, the College and Career Center invited professionals from different careers to speak about their journeys to get where they are today. Things from what it is like to work there, the pros and cons, education requirements, and other important aspects of their career, in hopes that it motivates students to work towards their dream careers. This day is not only a great opportunity, but it also counts as one of your Career-Related Learning Experience, or CRLE, credits. You need two CRLE credits to graduate and multiple opportunities to get the CRLEs you need; Career Day is one of those. When you fill out that reflection part of the Career Day packet and turn that into the College and Career Center, that goes to one of your two CRLEs. At Career Day there were about 50 different professions providing a wide variety of careers to explore. There were four sessions in 20-minute increments. They thought of the students when picking out which careers would be there. What would students want and what new careers could they expose to students who had no clue. Some professionals reached out on their own accord because they wanted to tell their stories and hopefully give students motivation to take steps to reach that career.
There were many great sessions on career day. One out of the 50 was Ashley Grams, a news reporter from KGW 8 News, and her photographer, Eric. Grams talked about KGW and how they cover a wide range of places, from the coast to up above Vancouver, Washington. Grams and Eric both work the morning shift, which can result in waking up at very early hours to cover various things, from breaking news and crimes to breaking down a court case. Grams says, “We are live on TV from 4:30 to about 7 in the morning, and then after that, we often get to go out on other stories we are interested in, get interviews with people, talk to them, and then put those stories together over time.” These early hours can be difficult for people if they want to pursue this career. Grams always knew that she wanted to do some kind of journalism. She originally thought she wanted to do sports journalism, and she even went to school and college thinking she wanted to do sports journalism, but unfortunately, COVID-19 hit while she was writing in the school newspaper. Fortunately, this made her realize how important it was to get information to people. Grams stated, “People don’t always have the time to look into stuff for themselves and I just knew that news was the thing for me.” This realization impacted her so she decided to pivot to news. She spent some time as an intern in New York for WNBC, then got her first job on air as a reporter in Reno, Nevada. Then, about a year ago, she got a job with KGW-8. Grams gave many pieces of great advice but one of them was, “Whatever you are interested in whether it is media, broadcast, or video, whatever it is just being able to see what it is like day to day is super important.”
There were so many great sessions available on Career Day, with so much to learn in each one. Make sure to turn in your reflection sheet to the College and Career Center to get that CRLE credit!
