On Friday the 13th we had an event that the 8th grade class went to called career day. Career day is a day when 8th grade students have previously picked 3 fields of work to go and learn about. This event was held at NCC, a Community College in Sheldon, Iowa. There were different fields you could chose to learn about and each one was either taught by a person that works at NCC or someone that they had come from a business, an example of that would be for television Broadcasting they had a Meteorologist from a TV station in Sioux City come.
The first rotation I went to learn about Armed Forces with 3 other people in my class. We were taught by Hiliana Suarey and George Mendoza of the 185th Air Refuelling Wing out of Sioux City. Something I learned from them is that there are five Branches of the U.S Military: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. They told us that each branch has a different mission. We were told that if you were to join the army you aren’t supposed to get a tattoo until after you join the army because they will let you know what you can get, how big, and where. They also showed us a video of what they do, in which one of of their airborne tankers takes off and refills two f-16′s in the air. I like flying so that is a reason that I might be good at this. A reason I would not want to have this job is getting shot out of the sky. Out of all of the careers I learned about this would be the least likely one that I would chose.
The second rotation I went to Heavy Equipment operator where two people was teaching but I only had one there. He told us that to do this job you need to be very safety-oriented because you could be driving a truck with a very long machine on it at the age of 18. Some of the machines that you can use are bulldozer, dump truck, scrapers, and excavators. There are also some machines that are used for building different things like bridges, roads, buildings, and you can also be in demolition. For school purposes, he told us that the only math stuff we need to know is addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I am good at math and I would like to help build cool things which is something that could help me. Something that would affect me would be having to pay attention for a long time because I am not always able to do that, and out of the careers this would probably be the second most likely one I would chose.
The last rotation I chose to learn was Manufacturing Technology taught by Brian Busch who teaches at NCC. He started off by telling us something that you have to do a lot in this field which is drafting, and drafting is when you take an idea and write it down on a piece of paper. There are different fields that they have for this like Aerospace, Electrical, Structural, Architectural, Mechanical, and Piping. He told us for school you could have a one to two year diploma from a community college and you need to know Geometry, Trigonometry, and Algebra. He said this is a Job in demand because since December he has had 60 Job applications on the board. Students could pick where they wanted to work with all the different opportunities. If I could pick a field of the career I would want to do Architectural because you make the floor plan for a house, then with a certain program it will build the house and you were able to walk through it. Something that would help me is that I like computers and I am good with them. A bad thing would be if I have trouble with the math because that could mess something up really bad, and out of the three this would probably be the most likely career that I would chose.
Last, before we left, we went and heard from a speaker name Chad Foster. A little background info on Chad is that he developed the rubber playground surface at McDonald’s. He is an author that wrote two best-selling books called, Teenagers Preparing for the Real World and Financial Literacy for Teens, and he made $452 as a professional Tennis Player. Anyway all in all he was a very motivational speaker and gave us lots of helpful information I really liked hearing about Armed Forces, Heavy Equipment Operator, and Manufacturing Technology. I am not sure, though, if I will do any of these jobs in my future. I only wish that on that day I could have learned about more careers.
