Karlee Sell has her heart set on becoming a photographer and filmmaker, but Friday she got a wake-up call on the kind of lifestyle she may be in for.
Sell, 17, of Temple, attended the Reality Fair held at ConVal High School, which the GFA Credit Union and the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce partner with the school to hold each year.
“It was nice to put my lifestyle into perspective. I’m hoping to be in photography/film, and they don’t make a lot of money. The average is $30,000, so I was struggling,” Sell said, referring to the budgeting process the Reality Fair takes students in the Personal Finance class through. “We had to put our knowledge to the test.”
Sell, a senior, has applied for out-of-state schools for college, so it’s all down to financial aid and scholarships, she said. But the student loans she can expect when she finishes her higher education may be more than she bargained for.
“I ended up being $200 in debt each month, which is a big deal for me,” Sell noted, when that expense was factored into her budget. And that was with holding a part-time job to supplement her income.
But she isn’t giving up on her dream, instead it’s motivating her to apply for more scholarships. “That’s what I do everyday after school,” she said.
The goal of the Reality Fair, now with three years under its belt, is to help students understand the financial obligations they’ll be facing once they leave school.
“It can be a dose of reality,” said Mary Lou O’Neil, an internship and community liaison for ConVal’s School to Career Office.
GFA and area chamber-member businesses participate, volunteering their time to the cause.
“Every booth is selling you utilities or selling you housing,” O’Neil explained. “We had someone here from Masiello Employment Services advertising part-time jobs.”
The fair also exposes students to various kinds of careers, ones they may not have ever heard of before.
Christina Newell, 18, of Dublin, attended the Reality Fair last year, in her junior year.
It was a good opportunity to meet people from the local business community, she recalled.
“They were really good at trying to get you to buy stuff,” Newell said, such as insurance. “There were so many options – that’s what I thought was amazing – that I didn’t even know were possible.”
In the Reality Fair, Newell chose a career as a doctor not knowing exactly where in the medical field she wanted specialize, but since then has determined she wants to pursue nursing. She said her internship at Monadnock Community Hospital, which ConVal’s career office helped her get, has helped her reach the decision.
“I learned nurses have more variety and more patient contact, and I’m really a people person,” she said.
Newell is still deciding between two colleges she’s interested in, the University of New Hampshire and the University of New England, and she’s still exploring various fields of medicine. This week, she will visit Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield to interview an audiologist.
ConVal has helped her prepare for a career, she said. “You get to choose your classes, so I chose classes knowing I wanted to be in the medical field,” Newell said. “I took anatomy and physiology and the internship. I’m taking AP chemistry right now.”
Newell said the Reality Fair is beneficial for students, even if they don’t know what career path they’re interested in: “I don’t know how much they think about it now, honestly, but I think it will help them in the future.”