An actor, a golfer, a politician, a lawyer, and a crowd of other professionals walk into a school. Three hours later, they leave having shared their work experiences with hundreds of ambitious students. That is precisely what happened on December 2, at the Communications High School Career Day organized by the SkillsUSA club.

“It had been a long process and the club worked so hard to bring this event to fruition. We had to find speakers, assign a SkillsUSA member to every speaker and organize everything from t-shirts to gift bags to desserts,” said President of SkillsUSA Senior Sarah Lynch of Interlaken.

After four condensed periods and a regular lunch, students clamoured to find room to hear from professionals from various career areas. Rooms were overflowing with enthusiastic students. Many students had to be ushered out of the rooms of popular speakers due to limited space.

Junior Katie Gibson of Wall noted the prevalence of the type of speakers selected.

“My experience at career day was great because there were so many different careers that I was interested in like graphic design and advertising. It fit very well with the theme of the school,” said Gibson.

More than half of the 17 speakers worked in the communications field including keynote speaker and CHS alumni Rachel Belli.

“In my presentation, I talked about the path I took to land a position at News 12 immediately after graduation and the obstacles I encountered along the way. I really wanted students to understand that there is a way to ‘do it all’ and get a dream job right after college. I also wanted to explain what it takes to make it in the industry and how students can set themselves apart as they begin the job search,” said Belli.

Belli’s alumni status was commented on by Sophomore Vivian DeRosa of Ocean.

“ I loved that our speaker was from CHS. I thought it was great to see what we could become in the future.”

Many of the other speakers were also affiliated with the school in some way or another. According to SkillsUSA advisor Mrs. Maher, there were seven alumni and six family members of the students or faculty including Software Engineer and alumni Nick Bobryk of Vydia.

“It was really fun to be back at my high school, get the chance to share my experiences with the students, and catch up with my old teachers,” said Bobryk.