 Hi, I'm Emma Arnson and I'm here on Teens on Topic. And today I'm joined by my lovely co-hosts if they'd like to introduce themselves. Yeah, hi, my name is Sarah Weide and I'm a senior at Da Vinci. I'm Zoe, I'm a junior at Davis Senior High School. And today we are gonna talk about careers and whether high school prepares you for them. So let's roll some clips from some adults in Davis. What was your favorite subject in high school and how did it help you in your career today? My favorite subject in high school was... My favorite subject was either... My favorite subject was definitely... My favorite subject in high school was... So biology was my favorite subject in high school. History. Math or science? Physics? History? US history? Psychology. And it has led me on the path to trying to become a history teacher. So right now I'm working within the Davis Joint Unified School District as a campus supervisor but I've met a ton of great people who are really helping me get to that goal that I'm almost close to grabbing. So it was definitely history and it showed me a lot of how this world works and how important the past is. Maybe. And how it helped me in my career. Well, I don't think anything I learned in high school really directly helped me, but it led me to go to college and study what things I did and become a scientist. And to be honest, it doesn't have anything to do with my career. I'm in construction. But it still remains my favorite history or my favorite subject in high school. And I'm a school counselor today and learning about other people's behavior and how their brain works. And the sociology of our society has helped me relate to people, has helped me work with people from different backgrounds and really has inspired me to dive into the why. When working with students, when working with parents as a school counselor, behind people's behavior. I'm not sure it necessarily did help me in my career. Maybe you just have an understanding about biological sciences, but it doesn't apply to my career. I think those are some really interesting clips and I really enjoyed seeing the different types of points of view in the Davis community. One thing that I was sort of interested in was seeing that most people didn't feel like their favorite subject in high school helped their career at all. And I think that's a really interesting thing to think about because that brings up the question, does high school help you in your career in the future? What do you guys think? I really feel like the high school as a whole. We're actually pretty lucky to have Davis in Da Vinci because they actually have a lot of opportunities for kids. There's internships like this. And then there's also stuff at UC Davis for the STEM kids and a lot of sports opportunities. But as a whole, I feel like this education system is very biased about what's considered quote unquote successful career path. And it's like if you don't go down that road, then there's something wrong with you and it's something that really needs to be fixed. Yeah, I think as a whole high school is generally really important in maybe not the content specifically because in 20 years I doubt that I'll actually remember what an integral is or what a quadratic formula is. I think it's more about kind of like the skills you learn through each subject and the critical thinking and analysis skills that you grow and kind of grow with in high school that shapes you as a person later on. So I think it's less kind of channeling you into a certain career. Yeah, I'd definitely agree. I was interested before in psychology, but then I did an internship in psychology and realized I do not like the application of psychology. So I think high school's definitely less of something that's preparing you for a career, but maybe preparing you to like interact with people, especially at least in my experience at Da Vinci, like working with other people, working in a group, that's, I think that'll help me, but I don't think calculus will help me. Yeah, what do you guys wanna do in the future? I wanna go into the film industry in some way. Like I don't know if I wanna do like television or like Hollywood or something more independent, but yeah, I'm really interested in the other arts. Yeah, so I have no idea what I wanna go into in the future. I think the older I've gotten since I was like a five-year-old, I've shifted less away from like princess astronaut doctor and I think I've become a lot more fluid in terms of what I wanna do. I really like learning. Generally, it sounds really stupid, but I think high school has given me the opportunity to see a lot of different paths and I think I could see myself being happy in a lot of different career positions and positions that don't even exist right now. So I don't think I have a career that I'm gonna do. Yeah, do you guys think that maybe high school should do a better job at like for career-wise? Cause I know at the end of high school, you have to choose whether you wanna go to a college, whether you wanna just go like take gap year, go straight into work and that's kind of a big thing to ask of most people who are not even 18 yet. I actually think in Davis specifically, there's a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things if you want to seek it out, but I think yeah, generally speaking, outside of Davis in the bigger world in the bigger picture, I think high school could do a little bit of a better job teaching that there is more than one way to go through life, that there's more than one path that you can take and sometimes it's not just gonna be from A straight to Z, it's gonna be all over the place sometimes and it's, but yeah. Really insightful. Thank you so much for that answer. Yeah, I think that high school, I have no idea. I've gone through so many different things that I wanted to do. I wanted to be a detective. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a psychologist. I just, I honestly, I have no idea what I wanna do in life and that is what's kind of stressing me out about college applications is like, I have no idea what I wanna do so I don't know what college I wanna go to. I don't know what I should prioritize so I think that's something that I wish I got a little more out of high school. Thank you so much for joining me here today and next week I believe we're going to be covering whether or not California should be split up into two or more different states so I'm really excited about that conversation. Thank you.