Veterinarian. Banker. Truck driver. Thirty-four area professionals, including this journalist, coverged on Marietta Middle School Thursday morning.
We were there to talk about our jobs at the 11th annual Career Day - a seemingly simple task, or so I thought at first. The night before, I hurriedly jotted out some notecards, grabbed a few newspapers and brought along our Nikon D1 digital camera. I thought I had myself a nice little presentation.
But as I strolled into the middle school at 7:45 a.m. the next morning, I couldn't help but have that awkward feeling akin to cramming for a test the night before. Although my presentation was ready, it dawned on me I would not be talking to adults or small kids. These were middle schoolers, the age when nothing serious is cool, everyone teases and the tall skinny kid (me) is always an easy target.
Those were my thoughts, in Room 206, as 25 pairs of middle school eyes waited for me to say something. And so, I began.
"By a show of hands, who likes to write," I asked. A couple of hands went up. "OK, keep those hands up, now, who likes sports?" Some more hands went up. "All right, how about business, technology, movies, fashion?" Eventually all the hands were up.
"All these things are part of a newspaper," I told the students. "So, whatever you like to do, it's likely you can do it at a newspaper." For a moment, I felt like an Army recruiter: "Be all you can be."
How ever my point came across, I thought it was an important one to try and get everyone interested. From there, I talked about the different newspaper jobs and pointed to sections of the newspaper in my hand as it related. As I went along, some students were clearly attentive and listening, while others looked like they were wondering what was for lunch: spaghetti or pizza? At least none of them fell asleep.
Most of the students found interest in the digital camera, however. When I told them they were handling a $5,000 camera, their eyes lit up. Some students snapped a few photos and then giggled to see their results on the digital screen.
When question time came, that went pretty well, too. One girl asked such good questions I thought about taking her back to the newsroom to assign her a story on deadline. Some kids asked about salary and dress codes, and the boys thought it was cool that I had been to two NFL games taking pictures on the sidelines.
"We may not get paid much, but there are some perks to being a journalist," I told them. I did roughly the same presentation four times in two hours. By a show of hands ending each session, a couple of the students said they were interested in the career, either in writing or photography.
I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that I hadn't scared everyone away.
"Some kids won't like the careers they saw today, but that's OK because then they know that's not for them," Marietta Middle School Principal Mark Doebrich said afterwards.
"It's important for them to start looking at their field, more so than a specific job. Career Day educates them on the expectations out of school ... and helps them make course selections in high school," Doebrich said.
He added that another goal of Career Day was to get the public into the school.
"They get a flavor of what the pulse is in the middle school," Doebrich said.
So although I may have been anxious going in, Doebrich's point stuck as I went out - middle school isn't as scary as the memories and rumors make it to be. If you can, take a trip back.