FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
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Welcome to Voices, a national award-winning podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.
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Jeff Krakoff: This is Jeff Krakoff. Today I'm speaking with Mya Stackhouse, who's a senior at Seneca Valley. And we want to talk about the Graduation Project. So every senior has to do one. Tell us a little bit about yours.
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Mya Stackhouse: My senior project had to do with exploring the world of information technology. That career had been one of the most fascinating field that I could think to do a job shadow for, and I was happy to have the opportunity at SAE International. And that company is Society of Automotive Engineers.
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Jeff Krakoff: Okay, cool. So again, one of the neat things about these projects, every student can choose almost anything that they want to do. So what in particular interested you in the topic?
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Mya Stackhouse: I was interested in? It's different when you're reading about a career field and then actually seeing someone experience it for yourself. And I just found that an opportunity that I really wanted to take hold of because I probably it would be different if I was studying in med school and then actually being in a hospital building. So that would be a good comparison.
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Jeff Krakoff: Well, on that note, one of the important components is job shadowing to get a better feel of what it's like to work in a certain field. Tell us about how your job shadowing experience went.
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Mya Stackhouse: It went really well. My mentor that I had her name was Julia, and she was very quiet, which I felt was like really funny because I also tend to be quiet. So it was good for my people skills to really try to reach out and ask more questions and be like a good communicator. So she understood that I was fascinated and I was excited to be there and she didn't have any doubts on my attention span.
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Jeff Krakoff: Okay, so how did that work? How often did you do it? Over a couple of hours. A full day. Tell us about that.
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Mya Stackhouse: I would go about once a week, and sometimes I do two days a week and it'd be three hours I'd spend. I'd get dropped off at SAE, meet Julia in the building, and then we'd be at her cubicle for the remainder of the time I'd be there. And she would just sit with me and show me what kind of projects she works on, what kind of meetings she is involved with.
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Jeff Krakoff: Okay, so what kind what were your takeaways? What did you learn from spending that time with your mentor?
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Mya Stackhouse: I really learned that anyone can start anywhere if they want to be in the IT field. You don't have to be starting out real young. It's beneficial if you do. But people have already been integrated in their own different career field as a preschool teacher, but then decided, oh, they want to do something else and they wanted more security. And IT is one of those fields that everyone is going to want more people in. So you can go through various kinds of teachings or boot camps and not all of them have to be for a college degree. There's like alternatives, which is good.
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Jeff Krakoff: So you've been working on your project for a number of months, and I know there's several elements and components. How do you manage your time to work on, schedule and complete each part of the graduation project.
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Mya Stackhouse: So I like to write a list of the things that I need to accomplish, things I need to ask or that I like to ask. And with the time frame that I've agreed on with seeing my mentor at SAE that also helps me compile about what I had time for or what else I could do. And it also ask her advice with like what she's able to show me so I can get the most out of my project as possible.
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Jeff Krakoff: Okay. What have you found challenges you about your project? Are there some things that surprised you?
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Mya Stackhouse: Uh, there was. I was very surprised of how, like, people were not as stressed out about their job as like, once you get comfortable in your career, it's not as tedious. Like if you really enjoy something or you're fast, like you're you just find something really interesting. It doesn't feel like you're pulling teeth. So it was it was really encouraging to see how much people loved their job and what they did, even though it may consist of sitting at a cubicle, but at least at SAE, everyone was really nice to each other and I just appreciated seeing it's not very dry job.
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Jeff Krakoff: So it sounds like you had a really good mentor and a really good experience there. Are there some main takeaways from the project, some learnings that you can share with us?
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Mya Stackhouse: So what I learned, I wasn't really I understand that a lot of students, they don't see the point in having to be required to do a Graduation Project. But for me, I really like to look at it as an opportunity to think about how what I want to do after high school, which is like hopefully the point. The main point is that. So it's like a nice takeaway is that it gave me an opportunity to understand exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it. And learning from someone who is in the career that I want to aim for gives me like a good point-of-view and like more information. So it helps me have a goal in mind.
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Jeff Krakoff: So I'm sure you had a rough idea of what future careers and opportunities might be ahead of you in the field of IT. But is there anything that you discovered that was new that you didn't previously know about through your time at SAE?
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Mya Stackhouse: There was many things I'd never seen before. Just like I've seen coding framework and how everything is constructed in computers. But I learned many new things that I had not done before. Like I created an application, which is like it's not hooked up to an actual website. So it's very it's just like a toy where you can like have a pretend phone store. And it was really amazing for me to actually type in a code into the back work of what makes a website up. And it's just it felt really, really special that I could make something like that even if it's like really small.
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Jeff Krakoff: So do you have any tips or recommendations to students who are going to work on Graduation Projects in the future based on your experience?
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Mya Stackhouse: Yeah, the biggest tip is just find something that you really have - just find something that is really special to you and what you really enjoy doing. Even if that's something is simple or complicated. It's just like you don't have to pick a project that's going to encourage your career. It's just you need to have something that can push you in a direction of motivation to find out what you're doing for after high school. It's an opportunity to talk to people, to communicate and to think about something, to create something you're proud of. So knowing what you are interested in is a very important factor.
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Jeff Krakoff: All right. Well, are there any last items you'd like to share with people about your Graduation Project experience?
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Mya Stackhouse: Um, I'd say the last ending bit would be that I'm happy with my project that I've made and hopefully everyone else will too, because it made me really excited to create it.
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Jeff Krakoff: I'm sure they will. So thanks again for spending time with us. This was Mya Stackhouse, a senior at Seneca Valley. Thanks again.