When I was a kid, I had big plans to become a professional baseball player. In middle school, I changed my mind and decided to become a dentist. By high school, I had tossed my old plans aside and had decided to make a career out of education as a teacher/coach. Now as I sit at my desk writing this column, I realize just how different my career has ended up compared to my original plans. Rarely do we end up making a career out of what we dream of as children. Luckily for kids today, there are plenty of opportunities for them to get their feet wet in various careers before flying the coop: Externships.

We’ve all heard of internships: the opportunity for college-aged students to work for a company in a field that they’re interested in working for after graduation. Well, now the word “externship” is being tossed around. While internships can last anywhere from a week to a couple of years, an externship is much shorter usually lasting anywhere from a few hours to a week. 

Today, you may want to become a doctor when you grow up. That’s great! Go spend a day externing at your family’s doctor’s office and find out if that’s what you truly want to do for the next thirty or forty years. Follow your doctor around from meetings with his or her colleagues to sessions with patients. I’m sure you’ll find that a doctor’s office is quite different from what you may be imagining. Maybe the medical field isn’t what you see yourself doing for a living. You may want to become a famous sports reporter for ESPN and report on the latest stats during March Madness. What an exciting career choice! Give your local television and radio stations a call and explain why you would like to follow their sports reporter around the office for a day or two. 

Externships offer high school students the opportunity to get out of the classroom and into real life situations in their potential career fields. They allow students to get an accurate snapshot of their “dream job” to ensure it is not glamorized or fictionalized from what they may see on television and in films. 

In addition to offering younger students the opportunity to get a jump start on their potential careers, externships offer invaluable experience. These days, most students graduating from college are doing so with at least one or two internships under their belts. An externship allows high school students a jump start on what many universities will require of them before getting a degree; it is also a great addition to college applications.

Today you may want to be a rock star; tomorrow you might want to be President of the United States. Some of you might want my job, but how will you know if you don’t jump in and see what it’s really all about? Externships are a great way for high school students to figure out exactly what they want to do with their lives because in a few short years, it will be time to turn in those jerseys and grab a brief case. I encourage you to do your homework now and find out a little more about the career field you want to be in by participating in a few externships.