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High school seniors get taste of real world through senior seminar
Mere months away from being let loose on the “real world,” seniors from Cloverdale, Greencastle, North Putnam and South Putnam high schools recently got a dose of what awaits them.
While the underclassmen at each school were taking the PSAT or SAT, approximately 370 seniors, 20 staff members and 15 community members converged on the McAnally Center at GHS for a senior seminar organized by Karen Nelson Heavin of Heavin College & Career Readiness Services.
“This is a first-time experience for all Putnam County Schools to come together for a senior seminar event,” Heavin said. “In the past, I have held them at some of the individual schools. However, with all of the schools doing PSAT testing on Wednesday with the younger classmen, the principals thought doing a combination senior seminar was a good use of time and resources.”
Fiscal sponsors for the event were the Putnam County Community Foundation and the DePauw University Hartman Center.
Over the course of seven rotations across the morning and early afternoon, students could choose from 11 different topics, with Adult Living 101, automotive care and personal finance all required sessions.
Other choices included college admissions, college athletic regulations, college student panel, Ivy Tech ASAP, Ivy Tech postsecondary options, military options, unions and stress and anxiety managemen.
The automotive session with Tom Standers provided perhaps the most hands-on experience, as Standers displayed how to check under the hood and change a tire on a vehicle with students performing some of the work.
“If you’ve never changed a tire on the side of a road, you should at least practice it in a nice, pristine location,” Standers said. “Any time you raise a vehicle off the ground, it’s a dangerous situation, both to you and others. So it’s important you do it safely.”
Standers also discussed the importance of checking the levels of fluids such as oil, antifreeze/coolant and brake fluid as well as the status of the battery and tire pressure on a monthly basis or at every other fuel fill-up.
During the personal finance session, financial adviser Amanda Laney told the students that mistakes are part of life, but they cannot become a pattern.
“What do mistakes teach us? What not to do next time,” Laney said. “What does mistake after mistake after mistake mean?”
“That you’re not learning anything,” a student replied.
“You said it, not me,” Laney said. “Mistakes are OK if you learn from them.”
Laney then delved into one of the biggest financial mistakes a young people (or anyone) can make: Getting in over their heads with credit card debt.
“You get a bill for all the crap you bought last month that you didn’t think about,” Laney said, noting that in the meantime, interest has hit, additional charges have been made and there’s probably more than the consumer is able to pay.
“You credit’s gonna suck,” Laney said.
Sometimes this leads to having to get a second job. For as bad as this might sound, Laney noted that it can improve not only one’s financial situation, but their resume and reputation, proving their responsibility.
“No one else is going to do this for you,” Laney said. “You guys are going to incur expenses in the next five years that you’ve never had to deal with before.”
“If you can’t afford to buy it, don’t buy it,” Laney concluded her talk. “The whole point of this talk is to live within what you can afford.”
The students also got some advice in a large group setting, such as Ami Pennington of Knitwell Group on “skills that will make you employable and a few things that will make you unemployable as well.”
The positive soft skills Pennington noted include communication, problem solving, conflict resolution, flexibility and adaptability and collaboration.
On the other side of the coin, Pennington noted some things that will quickly get an employee fired — discrimination and harassment as well as poor attendance.
On the whole, the day was about going beyond the normal classroom experience to teach students a few needed lessons before they go off to higher education, the workforce or military.
“Too many times we all hear that we no longer teach ‘real world’ curriculum in schools anymore,” Heavin said. “This is all about real world life.”