by Ana Tvaladze
Our school's college counseling office works hard to plan different activities that benefit us. One of such activities is the Career Fair. Career Fair is a conclusive activity of the career orientation program Goal of the career fair is to introduce us to lesser-known majors and careers related to them. Before the pandemic, the career fair was held in the gym, so students presented their majors with live presentations since we have gotten back to "normal" life. In addition to the live presentation, students had to record a video about their major this year. This way, subsequent generations of GZAAT students will be able to explore past careers.
In the past, students had concerns about this program. Since the majors were distributed randomly, some students had to work with vocations that did not intrigue them. This year the College Counseling office took this concern into account. Now, students can choose the major they find interesting, resulting in projects executed with more passion.
In an interview, the Head of the College Counseling Department, Ms. Keti Chikovani, says:
Career orientation is one of the crucial components of the Academy college counseling program. The sophomore students start with self-reflection to define their interests, skills, and values. By taking personality assessment tests, the students try to discover professions that relate to their passions and look out for the jobs they will enjoy working at in the future.
According to the school counselors, they are delighted with the students' work. The quality of research and visuals were well-prepared, and the program overall was successful. Keti Chikovani adds:
This year, we are truly proud of our sophomore class and their mentors (senior prefects) who managed to put together such a fascinating, energizing, and creative fair. Each group presented its profession with passion and enthusiasm. You could clearly see that the students were able to talk nonstop about the profession they chose to present at the fair. On behalf of the College Counseling Office, we would like to thank every single person fully or partially involved in this exciting process.
One of the sophomores, Nino Loladze, says that the process of preparation was quite messy in the beginning. She and the group members decided to distribute specific tasks among them. After overcoming such minor difficulties, the project was successful. Nino thinks that this project helped her and her peers explore different career options available in the world. She adds: Besides this, another thing I loved [about the project] is how this project showed the community and spirit of our school. Something I have not experienced since the pandemic started. She adds that the size of the tables was a little small, and it will be better if sophomores get bigger tables in the future.
Another sophomore, Natalia Tutberidze, says she learned a lot about various majors and careers from this project. However, she thinks the project would be more productive if students had a wider range of career options. She adds about the role of mentors:
My group mentor helped tremendously. She's one of the main reasons our project was successful - as we wrote the script, she helped us along every step of the way. Then she checked on us to make sure we were successful. I think the project would have been so much harder to navigate if our mentor didn't help.
Edited by Iviko Sakvarelidze