What do you want to be when you grow up? This is a daunting question that all of us are asked as young children until we reach our second year of college or when we graduate high school, which is when we must decide what field we are to become experts in. To ensure that we know some options for our future occupations, Career Day, organized by PHS administration and faculty, gives students the opportunity to get a glimpse into multiple fields.

Career Day will occur on March 30 at PHS from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. It will consist of two hour and a half workshops.

Assistant principal Eric Mapes, College and Career Center director Allison Bly and parent volunteers have collaborated together to plan 70 career workshops for students to choose from.

“Each student will choose two workshops to go to,” Bly said. “In each workshop there will be two to three presenters, each of which are in the same field.”

There will be a wide range of careers to choose from such as viticulture, ministry, engineering, business, real estate, culinary, firefighting and education. Each career workshop will hold around 30 students, however, the more popular careers, like business and engineering, will have more space for students. At each workshop the presenters will be talking about a wide range of aspects of their careers.

“The speakers will be talking about their careers,” Bly said. “As well as talking about  what type of training they needed, what type of education they received, how they got to where they are now and what a typical day in the life of their career is like.”

Some  speakers from past career days will return to this year’s Career Day, and will be accompanied by new speakers as well. In addition to new speakers there will be new career topics such as careers in the cloud, which relates to Apple technology, and food innovation, promotion and product development.

“We have a couple of returning speakers this year,” said chair of Career Day Eileen Ash. “We have Pete Harvey and Jennifer Colton speaking this year, who are both in advertising and Liz Tuan and Michelle Tellez, who are returning nurses as well as many more speakers.”

The purpose of Career Day is to introduce students to a career they have not thought about  and to help students learn more about a career they are interested in or solidify the career they were initially considering.

“Career day is a chance to give students an idea of what is out there,” Mapes said. “Hopefully it gets students thinking about what they want to do later in life.”

Last year there was a modified version of Career Day during CASP testing. Because of the conflicting events going on last year with the lack of a College and Career Center director. Students did not get a choice of who they saw; the speakers were assigned to different grade levels.

“A lot of the speakers are local Piedmont people,” Bly said. “We receive a lot of suggestions for speakers from parent volunteers, as well as brainstorming among faculty members.”

Due to the large number of speakers, ASB and around 40 parent volunteers will be helping out with the speakers. In addition, the Boy Scout council helps PHS recruit and organize topics for Career Day and has been sponsoring it for the past 40 years.

“It is a tradition,” Mapes said. “Life is about experiences, and to take a little time away from teaching for career day, it is a valuable event.”

Since Career Day is offered every two years, students have the opportunity to get a learn about four different possible careers during their time at PHS.

“I chose topics that I had interest in beforehand,” said senior Chloe Lee Rowlands, who attended Career Day as a freshman. “One of the benefits of Career Day is that it doesn’t necessarily show you a path or goal, but it gives you things to think about.”