HOUSTON – Laboratory technician is one of the jobs that students are being exposed to at the BridgeYear career test drive.
Yes, ‘test drive’.
These 50 or so students are doing more than going from booth to booth to listen to someone talk.
“I like how it’s hands-on, instead of just telling you about it you actually get to try it out,” said Avian Molina.
As a soon to be senior at Douglas MacArthur Senior High, Molina is just one year away from making some pretty big life decisions. Among them, what career to pursue.
“Everyone’s just set on, you gotta go to like a four year college and get a degree,” Molina said.
“As a nation we’ve pushed the four-year degree because there are fantastic options with a four-year degree. But the reality is that our economy needs the trade certificates, we need associates degrees,” Victoria Chen said.
That’s why Chen and her former co-worker founded BridgeYear. The relatively new nonprofit aims to educate high-schoolers about those four-year degree alternatives through a different type of career fair.
“Today, we have (a) pipefitter, we have (an) electrician, we have a bunch in the medical field, so health information technicians, medical laboratory technician, and then we also have a web developer one so they’re learning how to debug and code websites,” said Chen.
As for Molina, he wants to pursue biomedical engineering. However, he said he believes many of his peers would benefit from the BridgeYear experience.
“I have tons of friends that are like, more like working with their hands besides like real heavy education jobs,” Molina said.
If you’re interested in bringing this career fair to your school or community, you can check out there open house. It’s at 518 Shepherd Drive on August 3, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., next to the Kipling School.
RSVP here to go to the open house.