ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 5, 1995 TAG: 9512050032
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE
One of my colleagues knew she wanted to be a journalist when she was 8.
She was probably typing novellas into her laptop while I was still learning to tie my shoes.
A late bloomer in the flowering field of career choices, I was a freshman at Radford University before the notion of getting paid to write even entered my head.
So speaking to area high school freshmen at a career fair last week seemed a bit like explaining the law of gravity to a newborn: All in good time.
But I understand why the Blacksburg and Christiansburg-Montgomery chambers of commerce sponsored the event. Technology may flood a student with information; advanced classes might open doors for college. But without exposure to real people doing neat things, students will only be limited to what they see around them.
The more than 1,000 freshmen from Giles and Montgomery counties and Radford got to get away from their high schools for the morning and mingle on the second floor of Virginia Tech's McBryde Hall.
Everyone listened to a session on making career decisions. They chose two other sessions and heard professionals with careers like cosmetology and engineering talk about their jobs.
Kids must be more clued in to local issues than I was at their age, because the most popular session at this event was health and nursing.
Career analysts say those are the jobs destined to grow in future, in New River and the rest of the United States.
The second most common career choice: Auto repair. A good thing, because I refuse to give up on my battered Honda, still puttering along with 190,000 miles, and I'm willing to pay big bucks to anyone who won't laugh when I pull it into the garage.
Media careers didn't make the top 10. One Narrows High School football player told me he ended up there accidentally.
But that's OK with me. For one thing, he tolerated a great deal of teasing from his friends when I interviewed him as a mock example of what I do every day.
And, he learned something about a profession that otherwise may never have entered his head.
How many more of these career discussions will these kids endure before they decide? Will they end up like a former roommate of mine - a junior in college still panicked by the requirement to actually choose one major?
Or, will all this exposure help them uncover careers like the one my friend Brandon found: materials engineering. ("Materials engineering?" I asked him in high school. "Are you making this up?")
Shawsville Elementary School students already are pondering their futures.
Two weeks ago, they got exposed to more careers than I'd even heard of in the fifth grade: A cake decorator, an animal farmer, a folk dancer, scuba divers from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and an entomologist, to name a few.
Guidance counselor Charlotte Williamson says it helps to start early.
"These kids need to see what can happen if they set their sights high enough."
Lisa Applegate is a New River Valley bureau staff writer.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB