SIU Day provides important career guidance

Some juniors and seniors already know what they want to do after high school; others have no idea what they want to do in the future. Visiting a college can go a long way toward helping students make those important decisions.  

SIU Day is a day where students go to SIU-Carbondale and walk around campus in a group with other students who are interested in the same field of study. I had a chance to go this year.

Multiple schools from different counties went to this event Sept.14. 

After going to the student center to sign in, the dean talked to us about what we are going to do that day. Then he split us up into groups based on what we want to major in.

The nursing group was really popular. That’s what I and several other HHS students chose. We walked to the nursing building which has all of the classes that fall under the nursing major such as mortician, dental care, and nursing. 

The first thing I saw was the mortician room, and students from SIU were helping and telling us about how and what a mortician does. Some of the things we could do in the mortician room were touching a human brain and ashes and seeing where they keep deceased bodies that people donated to science. 

The best part about that was touching the brain. Some students, like me, did touch the brain. It felt weird; there’s no way to describe it You just had to be there. 

A lot of students didn’t like seeing or touching the brain. Senior Caleigh Whiting wasn’t really into the mortician room.

“I felt uncomfortable, so I excused myself from the room,” Whiting said.

The students that did touch the brain were fascinated by touching it.

“I thought it was an interesting experience and was excited to learn more,” senior Johnson said.

The second area that we went to was the dental hygienist room. There the teacher showed us a couple of x-rays of people’s teeth and showed how the xray reveals how many cavities, molars, crowns and even if people have metal in their mouth. One picture had an x-ray of a person’s jaw and there was something metal in his jaw from a car crash (possibly) and his jaw was broken. Senior Joey Quinn was interested in that area.

“I was really fascinated with what actually goes on when I’m getting my teeth cleaned,”  Quinn said.

Senior Sidney Neal was also intrigued with the dental room.

“It was really cool that we saw x-rays of people’s teeth and like how they can tell if you have good teeth or not,” Neal said.

The last class we went to was the nursing class which teaches the students how to put in an IV, perform CPR, and communications skills needed to try to calm the patient. They highly recommended that you need to take a test to get into the class, and you don’t have to take the class for a full year after beginning the program. 

SIU Day is one of the best field trips anybody can take. Students who don’t know what they want to major in should definitely go on this field trip. It will help you in so many ways.