Freshmen Attend Information Night
All Pierce High freshmen and their parents met in the band room on Tuesday evening, January 24 for Know How To Go. Mrs. Mary Birch, Pierce High guidance counselor, conducted the meeting and said it was about “talking to students about steps to take to be successful in high school and to be successful in college.” Students need to know about college because “College educations are becoming more necessary for the kind of jobs available in our economy.” Birch outlined four steps for college and career planning.
Step one is “Be a pain…in a good way.” Step one means to tell everyone about how one is going to college and ask a parent or someone else close to help guide the way to college.
Step two is called “Push yourself.” The second step teaches teens to work hard in high school and know what courses to take to get into college, then sign up for classes that will be a challenge.
Step three is called “Find the right fit,” and that doesn’t mean finding the right shoes that fit. It means finding the right college that fits. The college should have classes one needs to take, the college fits the student’s personality, and it has things the student is good at. To find the right college, one needs to find out what he or she is good at and what one likes to do. This means finding a career that fits one’s personality.
The fourth step is “Put your hands on some cash.” People every year don’t go to college because they can’t afford it, or they waste their money on things they don’t need. A new study says that 66 percent of new jobs will require some sort of college training. Many people can afford to pay for college and just need to apply themselves. One needs money for tuition, books, fees, and room and board.
The freshmen learned a lot from the meeting. Alex Retzlaff said he learned “that we have to choose what careers we want, and how much college costs.” Shae Pospisil said that she learned about the “classes you have to take to graduate.” Shae and Alex both liked the Algebra I and Algebra II video, which showed that hard classes aren’t scary; one just has to work hard.
Mrs. Birch hopes this meeting helped parents and students to think more about college and the way it can affect a student’s life, and that it gave parents and students information they need to be successful in high school and college.
