Middle School Stories

I had the great pleasure of presenting at Career Day at Independence Charter School in Philadelphia for the third time today. This was the first time for me since leaving the environmental consulting field. I was glad that they were still able to take me, now a communications person. 

Due to a snafu with Internet access, I was unable to share my Beautiful.ai presentation. (This was a good lesson and reminder, as always, to bring an offline backup of your slide deck.) Instead, I had to speak off the cuff. When it comes down to it, what I do in my communications role at the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council is tell stories. They always say, “write about what you know,” and fortunately for me, I know my own story. (Whew!) So in this case, I just told my story.  

My career story in three bullet points:

• Wanted to be a doctor, then didn’t
• Switched to environmental consulting, then switched out after 15 good years
• Switched to a communications career, which is super fun because I get to make things and tell stories

For maximum interactivity, I had several middle school age students tell stories on-camera, and then I showed them how I did a quick video edit in Premiere, and then we all watched the resulting video (and laughed all over again at their hilarious middle school age stories). 

A fun time was had by all. The best parts in three bullet points: 

• Encouraging young people to do what they like for a career
• Encouraging them to not be afraid to consider multiple careers (or even have multiple careers)
• Seeing old friends and making new ones

If you are asked by a school to speak at a career day, your answer is yes. The reasons why, in three bullet points:

• Schools love it when you share your experiences
• Helping people on a learning journey is always a good move
• They usually have bagels and/or donuts for you

Thanks to Dave Keenan, Middle School Counselor Anne Hall, Principal Kristen Long, and everyone at ICS for having me again. I already signed up for next year, so see you next year!