Cool Senior Experiences

When people hear the words “senior experience,” they think of stereotypes associated with one’s final year of high school. Whether it is senioritis, the senior slide, partying like everyday is the weekend, people immediately assume senior year is a year of slacking. For some seniors at T.C., however, this is not the case.

This year, T.C. is offering a different type of senior experience, one that does not involve slacking off. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The Senior Experience program offers students the opportunity to intern at a business of their choice. This allows them to prepare for the real world after high school.
Several students have even gotten internships that adults would be lucky to get in the current economy. The current job market has made it very difficult for students to get an internship, as job shortages in certain fields have made the unemployed the first priority for available work. Teri Barnett, Graduation Coach and Senior Experience co-coordinator said that another reason that students are having trouble finding internships is their lack of professional contacts. “They haven’t developed the professional contacts or networking skills necessary to find a suitable internship,” she said. The students who have found internships, however, have found some pretty cool ones.

Sean Colligan will be doing his Senior Experience at Liveshots D.C., a small studio facility used by cable and network news stations. During his time there, Colligan will be looking after guests, miking them up, editing digital video, and learning how to use robotic cameras. He really appreciates that T.C. is able to offer the Senior Experience, as he believes it will help students get job experience, as well as help them find a possible career. “I’m interested in media production as a possible career, and this internship will hopefully give me some experience,” said Colligan. He was lucky when it came to finding a Senior Experience, as a family friend connected him to Liveshot D.C.

Chris Bischak will be spending the three weeks of his Senior Experience working at Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. “[It is] an organization dedicated to providing policymakers with the best strategies to fight crime,” said Bischak. “[The strategy] is to make sure kids don’t become criminals.” The philosophy behind Fight Crime is that no one wants to be a criminal, but the conditions surrounding force them to be. Therefore, one can fight crime simply by changing the conditions. During his tenure at Fight Crime, Bischak will be working with the media relations director, analyzing media reports pertaining to the organization. Working at Fight Crime has nothing to do with Bischak’s planned career. Bischak didn’t have any difficulty getting an internship, as the person he’s going to be working with is his dad’s friend.

J.J. Jones will be working at the American Diabetes Association, where he will be organizing files in the Giving Department and calling donors to thank them for their contributions. While Jones is not pursuing a career in this field of work, his grandmother has diabetes, so he felt like this would be a fitting way to help others who have the disease. He said that the only problem was finding an opening; as soon as he did that, all he had to do was ace the interview. Jones had nothing but good things to say about the new program. “Senior Experience is a great thing for seniors,” said Jones. “Not only does it give us a break from school before graduation, but it gives an opportunity to get some real world work experiences in before we really go out into the world.”

Maggie Kennedy will be working at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C. “While there, I will be spending a week in different departments because there are many parts to a hotel and I want to learn about them all so I will be able to centralize what I specifically want to work in,” said Kennedy. She hopes to have a career in tourism, so this experience will give her a great preview of what the business is like. She actually thought it would be easy to find an internship, since so many companies are laying off countless employees; free labor seems like a great deal. She also interned at a hotel in Ireland while living there her sophomore year. Due to the Willard’s close proximity to the White House, Kennedy will have the opportunity to meet many political figures. “To be starting at such a renowned hotel is a dream come true,” she said.

While the Senior Experience program has great potential, how much it will benefit students depends on how they treat it. If they take part in the program for the sole reason of missing three weeks of school,
then it will most likely be three weeks wasted. If they truly treat it like a job, however, then it will provide crucial experience in the job market.