Independent Project Highlight: Ben Smith

Independent projects are a very important part of CCHS; they teach students good speaking and research skills, while learning about something they love. This year, there have been many projects presented by students, and one that stood out is Ben Smith’s project on careers. He was kind enough to talk to the Cougar’s Tale about his project.

What was your project on?

I looked at five different careers and researched a couple different question to get a more in depth look at what the jobs were like.

Why did you decide to do it?

        I decided to do it because I’m a senior this year and I’m starting to make college choices and I thought researching more about jobs would help me better decide what kind of job I wanted in the future, to get a more in depth look at them.

What was the process like?

        For each job I looked at four different questions. One is, how much would this job pay, and the next one was what is the future of this job and then what college education do you need to have to get this job. The last question was what skills do you need. Also, I interviewed someone who did that job and asked them what the best part and the worst part was about this job. I think that was really important because it helped me get an experience from someone who actually had that job and I really liked that part.

Did you know about your subject before you began the project?

        I knew that being a teacher required a lot of speaking, that most of the job needed good presentation skills and good communication skills, I knew that before about all the jobs.

What were some things that surprised you about your subject?

        Some things that surprised me were when I went on twitter I thought that you would need a high level of math skills, but I found out from the person I interviewed that you don’t need more than a high school education, and that surprised me because I always thought accountants had to know a lot about that stuff, but she said you didn’t need to know much about it.

What was your favorite part?

I think my favorite part about this job was interviewing the people, because most of my other projects were internet research, and I like interviewing people and interacting with them and asking questions about their job, because it’s something I like doing, and it was really fun seeing what their job was without internet research. It was fun getting to see what their job was actually like.