Our First Career Fair
Do you remember what it was like to attend a career fair? I’m mostly asking if you remember what it was like as a student attending a career fair.
I say this with full transparency, I had forgotten what career fairs were like until yesterday. I had forgotten what it was like to be a high school or college student and not have a great idea as to what I wanted to do “when I grew up”. Career fairs are so helpful with this.
Yesterday, Garrett and I had the opportunity to be a part of a career fair at South Greene High School. As we were discussing what our presentation might look like or what we might do with the precious 30 minutes that we had with each group of students, we both remembered something very important. When we were in high school, we weren’t exposed to media. We also realized that both of us are very hands on & visual learners.
In all honesty, Garrett and I had NO idea what to expect. We jokingly said to one another that we’d be shocked if 6 people showed up to hear us talk about media. That wasn’t the case at all.
The career fair was set up in 4 x 30 minute sessions and the students were able to pick which sessions they wanted to attend based upon their interests. To our surprise, all 4 of our sessions were full of students. In one of them, we actually ran out of chairs for them to sit in.
Career Fair at South Greene High School. High School students interested in learning about the opportunities within the Photo and Video industry.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to our prep work for our presentation. Knowing that we are both visual learners, we developed a plan for our presentation to the kids. We were going to teach 3 basic items dealing with Framing, Composition, and Lighting. We taught these principles by referencing actual shots from a recent project with Greeneville Energy Authority, our local utility company, broadband project. To our surprise, most of the kids truly seemed to be engaged and participated with our lesson.
In an effort to keep the attention of high school students, we had planned to leave the last 10 minutes of our presentation to be HANDS ON.
The day of, we brought a light, a tripod, and a camera for the students to get their hands on. Their task was to set up an “interview” scene armed with their recent knowledge of framing, composition, and lighting. In all 4 sessions, the students actually set up REALLY good interview scenes. I wish I had taken some photos of their finished products.
Ultimately, we were humbled by the opportunity to speak with the students about all of the possibilities within our industry of “media”. Hopefully we were at least able to bring awareness to the opportunities within photo and video.
Garrett and I went into the whole thing with very little expectations, but we left the event feeling energized. We believe that the future is bright. It’s just up to us adults to see that our kids have the opportunity to shine.
