Ann Liebau- Midwife

Midwifery is not for me, and this is just because of a few main reasons. First of all, the on-call system would be a really difficult lifestyle. I can't imagine working a twenty-four hour shift first of all, and second of all, I think that would be very stressful. Not knowing when and where your next job would be, and having to make lots of emergency plans to take care of kids/ family/ appointments, etc. would be incredibly hectic! Another reason this job is not for me is the fact that I'm not too good with blood and whatnot; plus I have an incredibly weak gag reflex, so that's not good! On the flip side, it would be beautiful to bring new life into the world. The pay sounded good, too!

Amy Beamer- Human Resources

I didn't think that I was going to be interested at all in Amy's job, but she proved me wrong! It sounded like there were many different aspects involved with working in human resources, which I like. She talked about running interviews and giving advice about who she thought was best for the job, as well as acting as "a parent," "police," and "therapist" in the workplace. I like that it is more of a broad job, rather than just focusing on one small thing. Something else that I like about this job is that involves a lot of working with people, which is always interesting. I don't think the hours of an HR worker would be too bad either! Working in human resources is a job I had never considered before.

Sidney McLean- Crown Attorney

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this career. Sidney left me with mixed feelings about the idea of being a lawyer. I definitely think it would be an interesting career, and some of the cases would be fascinating especially in criminal law. She said it was a satisfying career many times, and I'm sure it would be! It would be incredibly rewarding to be the lawyer that makes a hard criminal spend time in jail.

Something I don't think I would enjoy about being a lawyer would be dealing with cases that were particularly gruesome. I would be too emotional to handle some of the cases, I'm sure. I guess there are other strands of law, like civil, but those don't interest me. Also, it would be really difficult to speak on the spot if something went different than expected in the courtroom. I feel like I would be caught off guard too easily, and wouldn't be able to do a good job convincing the jury or judge.

I'll have to keep thinking about this career, because I don't know exactly how I feel about it just yet.

Scott Wahl- RIM

When Scott came in to talk about his job at RIM, he started off by giving us a ton of information about different jobs within the company. To be honest, I got kind of lost, and couldn't tell what was actually his job. By the sounds of it though, a career in his field is not of interest to me. He worked long hours each day, and the company's busiest season is in the summer. That doesn't sound too appealing to me. Although it would be cool to be working with people who produce some of the latest and greatest technology in the world, technology isn't something that particularly interests me. Sure, he got a lot of perks in his job, but I still don't think this is the job for me!

Judith Koeller- Math Lecturer

Judith Koeller sounded like she was passionate about her job as a math lecturer at UW, which is always a good thing! When she spoke about being a lecturer however, that does not sound like a career that would be particularly interesting to me. I like math, and am a good math student, but I can't see myself wanting to lead hour long lectures to a hundred or so university students in the future. Standing up and talking about math, and teaching math at a podium in a lecture hall doesn't appeal to me. If I were going to teach math, I can picture myself at a highschool or elementary school, where it would be a more interactive job. Who knows though, maybe I will change my mind when I'm older.

Melissa Durrell- TV News Journalist

I thought Melissa Durrell was really attention grabbing when she spoke to us about her career as a TV news journalist. She told really engaging stories that held my attention, like what inspired her to become a reporter in the first place. She made it sound like a very exciting career, that required on-the-spot thinking. When she spoke about being on the scene of event, having no pre-thought out script of what questions to ask, and then having to interview someone sounded very exciting. I'd never really thought about the idea of being a TV news journalist before, but having Melissa come in to speak to our class changed that. It definitely sounds like an exciting career path, that would lead to many different opportunities. The idea of travelling to cover news stories interests me as well.  The one thing that would be difficult about this career would be having to to think up interviews on the spot, knowing that you were live on the air.

What About an Architect?

My grade eight class had to do a project about a career that interested us from the top ten list of jobs on a career aptitude test. One of mine was architect, so I decided to do my project on that. The job actually seemed really interesting to me. It combines aspects of math, art, and science, all of which interest me.

Being an architect would also be a really satisfying job, I think. Being able to walk around and point out parts of buildings that you could say, "I designed that" would be pretty cool. I took the grade eleven art course first semester, and part of the course was art history. We spent some time talking about classic Roman and Greek elements of design, and I found that fascinating. I've always thought that certain parts of architecture, especially on historic buildings, were incredibly beautiful.

I'm going to keep architecture in the back of my mind as a career path, because I think it could potentially end up leading somewhere. I think I recall from my grade eight project, that they don't pay too badly either, which is always a good thing!

Historic Montreal architecture

Carrie Snyder- Author

It was great having Carrie Snyder come in to our class to read from her novel. I love when I get the chance to hear an author read because then it allows me to hear the way they actually wrote and some of the neat background behind the story.

To me, it was really interesting hearing about her family's personal experience in Nicaragua. Their living conditions, where they went to school, and some of the other little stories she spoke of, like snooping into the office, I thought were intriguing.

I had never really considered being a writer as a career option before, and having Carrie come in to talk about her line of work was very interesting, but I don't think a writing career would be for me. She spoke about how long this one novel took her to write, and it was close to 6 and a half years. For me, I know I would lose interest in a project if it took that long. The process of writing and rewriting and editing and everything else I find pretty tedious, so being an author probably isn't in my future.

She joked about her income too, saying, "yeah you can live off it... not very well, but you could live off it!" Having put almost seven years of work into something, I don't know how rewarding that would be in the end. I'm sure some people love it, being an author, I just don't think I would.