Students Get Taste of Life After Education

Students in Merrimack Middle School's eighth-grade were encouraged to explore opportunities and chase their dreams last week when more than a dozen business professionals infiltrated the school to participate in its first-ever career exploration day.

Fifteen presenters in all, ranging from a builder to a professor, a National Guardsman to Ms. New Hampshire and several in between attended the career exploration day, designed to give the young teens a look into life after school and to talk to them about succeeding in their future endeavors.

The half-day program allowed students to meet with four different presenters who gave them a baseline introduction to their profession and held a short question and answer period for the students to ask their best questions.

In one classroom, National Guardsman and part-time Merrimack Police Officer John Pelletier urged the young teens considering entering military service post high school do so with an eye of what they'd like to do in the future to consider all branches of the service to find their best fit.

“Pick something that is going to be a skill set you're going to use later in life,” Pelletier said of picking a track in the military.

Asked what his favorite part of being part of the Guard is, Pelletier didn't hesitate: "The pride," he said.

“People will just shake your hand and say 'thank you,' ” Pelletier said. “To me, that's just overwhelming.”

Elsewehere in the building, Nashua-based photographer Mark Levesque was busy talking to the youth in his session about life in the shoes of a professional photographer using real-world situations anecdotally, and talking to them about the different ways to use knowledge of photography outside of just shooting a photo to round out their careers.

Upstairs Regan Hartley, the current Miss New Hampshire, was speaking to a small group of male and female teens about a career in modeling. Her message? Building confidence in yourself and being yourself are two of the best qualities to exhibit as a model. They are qualities that transcend just that job and can be translated at just about any trade involved, she said.

Spearheaded by Becky Thompson and Leslie Warhola, career day planning began last fall with a 116-questionnaire for students to fill out the about their interests. With the questionnaires complete, organizers took the information and compiled a list of the most popular jobs. They then begain networking to see if they could find presenters from each of the professions.

Thompson said it took a couple months to track down enough people to present on their expertise, but it was important to Thompson and Warhola that the teens got a glimpse into the field, from someone who lives it, not a teacher who's read about it.

“These are the people who live it day to day and see the realities of the job,” Thompson said.

About three quarters of the way through the morning affair, Thompson said she was impressed by student behavior and energized by their excitement about the event.

“We wanted to make sure it was tailor-made to the kids,” she said, adding that they are looking forward to making the career exploration day an annual event.

At the end of the morning, Thompson and Warhola held a short program with the presenters to find out what they thought of the day.

The general consensus was that it went smoothly, but there were a few things the presenters thought could be employed in following years to improve upon the first year.

Suggestions included having students prepare questions ahead of time to prevent lulls in the presentation. They also suggested extending the presentation time by a few minutes to allow them to delve into the job a little more. And they also asked for the school to provide a way for the students to give feedback so they would know what resonated and what didn't.

“I think this is a great program that gets them to think about things in the future,” said Brad Knight, a building developer.