Getting a Head Start on Your Career

Taking college classes while you’re in high school

Consider enrolling in a class at a local college or university if:

• You are interested in a class (in an academic or nonacademic subject) that your high school doesn’t offer
• You’ve already taken all the advanced classes or classes that challenge you and crave a deeper level of thinking
• You find the work in your classes to be too easy or not as stimulating as you would like
• You’d like to participate in more intense discussions or cover material in greater depth than what your school has to offer
• You want to be around older students and people who place more importance on academics than your high school peers
• You want to know what college campuses and classrooms are really like
• You want to get a head start on your college education
• You want to do more independent work

—Rebecca Greene

Job shadowing

Select someone in a profession that interests you and arranging to follow that person around, “observing, learning, and asking questions. You don’t have to perform any tasks, unless you’ve arranged to do so ahead of time. Instead you watch and form opinions. You determine whether the job interests you and whether you might be good at it. You get a first-hand look at the workplace, the responsibilities and the skills required to do a job well.
—Rebecca Greene

Adapted from Rebecca Greene, The Teenagers Guide to School Outside the Box (Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing, 2001)

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