Every year students at Palo Alto High School are given the opportunity to think about their future in the form of Career Day. The day brings a special schedule and many members of the community who wish to impart their wisdom on the student body. To many this day seems beneficial for students. I am not one of those people.

Don’t get me wrong, I think career day is an excellent educational institution and am glad we have it. My problem lies in its organization. Several weeks before the day, each third period class is given the opportunity to vote for a speaker of their choice. Unfortunately, the classes usually do not vote unanimously.

The result is students having to sit through a presentation they have no interest in while they could be in another classroom, hearing something that is important to them. I believe that Paly should allow students to choose which career day speaker they listen to, thereby assisting them in the field they are interested in.

All students will sign up for a classroom before career day and when it is time for the presentations, they shall go to the classroom they signed up for. Those who choose to "cut" their career session will receive a cut for the previous class. That means if the sessions were after third period as they were yesterday, a "cutter" would receive a cut for third period.

Those with a prep during the period before the career sessions would not be left out. They would be able to sign up for any session they wanted without having to have a class that period.

Some may say that the current system shows kids a wide variety of career choices to see whats out their. That may be but students will only see four different career choices in their high school career. If a kid isn’t interested in science or math, is have an astrophysicist visit helpful? Or if a kid really likes business, would a firefighter be appropriate?

Students need to be given a variety of choices but not be shuffled into an option which doesn’t interest them. If the school really wants to show students a variety of careers, I believe it to be better to just have an assembly or assemblies, where members of the community come in and talk about their profession, thereby showing students many professions while guaranteeing at least one will be worth the time.

The assembly method may take too much time which makes my original idea all the better. Students pick their career session and attend it in the same amount of time the current system allows.

Career Day is an important part of a student’s education. Rarely do students have a chance to see what could be their future and find out what direction they want to take. This is all the more reason we must work to make Career Day an enriching and useful tool in students lives.