The Highschool Experience: Valley vs. C-TEC
As many students here at Valley are aware, Junior year of High-school we have the option to transfer to the Career and Technology Education Center, better known as CTEC - our local technical High school. Our administration does a good job of opening that option for us, and by middle school we are taught the basis of what the school is and what it has to offer for our education and our future.
Consequently, by Junior year, many decide to take that route (about 40% of the most recent class) and attend school there, in the end tossing their cap for both CTEC and their home school.
For those of us who decide to stay, CTEC can be a bit of a mystery. Though most of us have been on class field trips to the school, we wonder what it’s actually like to attend a different type of school so far into our educational careers. Though many of us have friends that attend school there, I thought it would be interesting to get a more in depth look of the adjustment of everyday life at Valley versus CTEC, and interview a few students who attend currently.
I chose to interview two Junior students, Tyler McNicol and Sydnie Felumlee, who recently transferred to pursue and explore their future career paths.
When asked whether or not the adjustment from Valley to CTEC was hard, Clinical Care student Tyler McNicol answered “Yeah, it was definitely weird going from knowing everyone to knowing about 5 or 6 people, and not really even being friends with those 5 or 6”. Similarly, Cosmetology student Sydnie Felumlee said, “Yes, because I missed my friends and my teachers at Valley, but by the end of the first day, I had a lot of new friends and for that I’m glad I came to CTEC.”
As far as the classes go, Felumlee explained to me that like school here at Valley, “you have your main classes”. The difference at CTEC is that on top of these four classes, you also have lab in between. As previously mentioned, Sydnie is a cosmetology student, so she has lab periods on Tuesday and Thursdays, “sometimes more depending on what (they) are learning or doing”. However, most programs have labs everyday.
McNicol explained that the main difference he experienced at CTEC was the time spent in labs. He recalled the increased amount of time spent in labs (in comparison to regular classes) and how, through that time, “you really start to connect with the people and teacher in that lab”.
I personally speculated that balancing labs and regular classwork would be hard, so I asked my interviewees how difficult they find the workload. Surprisingly, Sydnie shared that it isn’t overly difficult, as “most classes don’t give give homework, but lab does give a lot of homework”.
Tyler shared a similar view, stating “not really, but sometimes the workload does become a lot to handle; but, that doesn’t really have anything to do with c-tec, just school in general”.
Felumlee and McNicol also gave insight on some of the smaller aspects of CTEC- the little aspects that we don’t often think about in school, such as clothing choice and lunch time. On wearing a uniform everyday, Mcnicol said that he “likes wearing the uniforms because they are comfortable”, especially for his clinical care lab. Felumlee also said she likes them because “they make the mornings quicker...not having to pick what to wear each day”. The lunches seem to be pretty similar to here at Valley, with two options for the students’ meals.
All in all, CTEC seems to be a good option for those opting to expand their expertise in particular career paths (programs include cosmetology, clinical care, teaching, culinary,technology, criminal justice, dental assisting,fire-fighting, exercise science, automotive careers, engineering,robotics, construction, and welding). Many of us at Valley are most likely curious as to what everyday life would be like had we chosen to go there instead of staying here for the remainder of our High school career. With this article, I attempted to uncover the reality of switching schools and how it’s affected our peers. It appears that it’s all in individual perspective, and the benefits outweigh the costs of changing everyday routine and atmosphere.