School is a stepping stone to help students to navigate the real world and get a job. Harding’s first ever career day was created to expand the students viewpoints about certain jobs and to educate them on potential future careers.

Students signed up for three sessions, writing their top 5 choices down. Everyone but the seniors, who had a Q&A during the third session, were given three sessions to explore different careers and talk to different professionals and their careers.

Sessions were held by professionals, whose careers ranged from law, education, the military, computer gaming and dentistry, providing a wide range of interests for the students.

Elizabeth Silver, a former teacher at Harding and now a dentist student in her final year in dental school, was one of the presenters who came and taught about her chosen career.

Silver hadn’t originally set out to be a dentist, having attended to OU to learn to teach.

“I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said. With hard work and support, she eventually went on to start her dentistry career.

For her presentation, Silver created a short PowerPoint Presentation, and brought visual aides such as a skull, plastic teeth and the tools she operates with.

“I talked about my unconventional journey to get to a career I love, what I love about it, and how I knew it was right for me,” Silver said.

Students who sat in on her presentation learned life lessons, along with information about the career, such as the salary and education needed, and about other dentistry professions, such as dental assisting and dental hygiene.

“It was interesting seeing how a teacher from Harding went to pursue a different career. It was also really cool learning about what goes into being a dentist and how challenging it can be to get into dentistry school,” said senior Tatum Darrow.

When asked about life lessons, Darrow talked about how comforting it was knowing that she wasn’t stuck in one career path.

“You’re not stuck in one job. You can always change it to pursue something else,” she said.

Seniors were given the special privilege of talking to guest speakers and asking them questions about jobs and how to act during them, asking questions ranging from “should you be friendly with your boss?” to “what immediately makes you turn away a resume?”

Senior Jackson Burnette spoke about what he learned from the speakers. “I thought the soft skills thing was really nice. The most helpful thing I got from that was when you have a phone call interview to look in the mirror, to judge your own facial expressions. I feel that was really helpful,” he said.

Burnette also enjoyed the Q&A session.

“I think it’s mainly because of their experience in their three fields. They can translate that to us, and I think that’s a great learning experience that not many people are offered.”