HEY! EIGHTH GRADERS!
Work Hard and You WILL Find Your Road
Our offerings on this website will help you prepare for, secure, and successfully serve an internship when you are a senior in high school. To be fully prepared for that opportunity, we have created a program especially for eighth graders called ‘The First Rung.’
The First Rung is all about your future and what you need to do now to be ready for the future you want. During your year in grade eight, we will offer you resources and information you need to help you get ready for high school. As an eighth grader, you probably think you are a long way away from getting a full-time job, but the years between now and then will fly by. Start preparing yourself NOW. When you are in high school, we will offer you information about the workforce and how you can get ready for education after high school and how to start looking for employment as an adult.
We know that most young teenagers (that would include YOU) don’t know for sure what careers they might want. We also know that an eighth grader who thinks he or she will have a certain career will probably change that career goal many times before high school graduation.
However, thinking about what career you want NOW will help you prepare for and and get the career you want. Many demanding careers require certain types of academic and/or vocational courses that will prepare you for what you need to learn to be successful in that career. So, start thinking now and continue your planning throughout high school.
You may not know if your chosen career will require you to attend college or what major (course of study) you might select if you go to college after high school. Some students may be wondering if a trade school might be better for them than college. We will provide more information about various options for education after high school gradation.
Know that you are not alone. While a few of your friends may have already decided what they want to be, most young teenagers haven’t really made up their minds about their career choices. When you get to high school, some of your high school friends may have decided on a career path, but an estimated 20 to 50 percent of high school graduates enter college as ‘undecided’ (which means they have not picked a specific course of study required for a particular profession). So it’s best to start thinking about your far future NOW.
Students who select a college course of study or a trade school program that matches their interests are more likely to stick with that particular course of study and finish their post-high school education on time. However, very few high school graduates choose programs that suit them and that aligns with their interests.* They just don’t know how to make the connection between their interests and their choice of career. They may even pick a major when they start college only to find they do not like the academic content that major demands. They wind up changing their major. In fact, a whopping 75 percent of students change their major at least once before graduation.
There may be no way to avoid a situation in which you might have to change your major, but that is usually a very expensive proposition. If you change your major, you will have to take additional courses or retake courses you have had but that offer a different perspective on the material you study. You will have to pay additional tuition, and spend at least six months (and often much more) to complete the coursework you need to graduate with a different degree than the one you had in your sights when you started college.
That’s why we spent a lot of time developing our work-readiness curriculum and activities. We don’t tell you what career to pick, but we do give you a lot of critical information that will help you make that all-important career-choice/college-choice/trade-school-choice. We don’t tell you what career to pick, we tell you what you need to do to get the information you need to help you make that decision.
And we also offer opportunities for you to hear young workforce professionals (both white- and blue-collar) talk about how they decided on a career and managed to carve a successful path to that end.
But ultimately, almost any college major or technical school program that you may choose will require you to work hard for the education you need to be successful. The only way you can make THAT work easier is to work as hard as you can in every subject, in every year of middle and high school, and get the best grades you can.
That hard work will not only help you choose a career, that hard work will also help you succeed in whatever career you choose. GEMESA
*ACT, Inc. 2018.
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Links to Additional Information:
For Eighth Graders: The First Rung
For Freshmen and Sophomores: The Stormy Wannabees Advantage Initiative
For Juniors and Seniors: The Rainmakers Internship Preparation Program
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