Three seniors already look forward to after college careers
Senior Celiena Davis hopes to pursue a career helping victims of sex trafficking.
Most upperclassmen at BSM have a broad idea of what they want to do after completing high school. But seniors Celiena Davis, Brielle Baker and Noah Shields have a more specific action point of what they want to do with their lives after school. From arts to detective work, these students plan on using their talents to achieve their dream jobs.
Davis has been interested in combating human trafficking ever since a friend took her to a seminar specifically on sex trafficking. This sparked Davis’s interest because of how common this harsh reality is for many men and women. “I was really taken back by how common it actually is and to know that it’s going on right here in Minneapolis is really saddening,” Davis said.
On a more artistic note, Baker is planning on studying musical therapy in college. After deciding that maybe a theater major wasn’t the most realistic for her, she did research and decided musical therapy was her preferred career. Musical therapy helps people assess communication skills, well-being, social functioning, and cognitive health through musical reactions such as songwriting, receptive listening and lyric discussion. “I [want] to have a successful career [so] I did research this year and decided Music Therapy was super interesting to me,” said Baker.
Shields’ dream job has been character design and animator since first grade, and his desire to pursue this career has only grown stronger over the years. Because video games sparked this interest when he was younger, he hopes to be able to influence kids the same way. “I love the idea of being able to create games that inspire people to become game designers themselves. As a kid, I was always big on video games, and got a lot of inspiration from the games that I frequented most often,” Shields, who plans to study game design and animation at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, while also interning at Blizzard Entertainment his freshman year of college, said.
While these three students have driven passions for their dream jobs, obstacles may always stand in the way of achieving these dreams. Baker says that the musical therapy field is very competitive, and most colleges only take as few as 10 people per class. Hoping to be one of the selected students to major in this field, Baker would like to study psychology, intro to piano, intro to guitar, music and behavior, while possibly pursuing an internship her senior year. Along with her knowledge about college studies, Baker has done some work of her own. “I’m taking voice lessons and working hard in school to prepare for this job,” said Baker.
Davis agrees that she may face problems that could prevent her from going into this career. The classes Davis is looking at taking include sociology, social work, ministry, and many more. Davis continues to prepare for this job through advocacy projects, seminars, reading books and expanding her basic knowledge through research. “Something that would stop me from achieving this job would probably be not being presented or not being able to find the resources or connections to get a job in this field,” Davis said.
With a passion for art and many different creative interests, Shields hopes to be able to explore everything he would like to, while focusing on the design aspect of work. “[This job] requires a lot of work, but I also have a lot of different interests that fall in different artistic fields that would require my full attention,” Shields, who hopes to have a leg up by attending courses at design schools on 3D animation and game design, along with his internship this next school year, said.
High school counselor Ms. Amy Larson is one of the many people who help these upperclassmen get ready for their life ahead in college. “Most high school students don’t know what they want to do… So the general message to the BSM community [is to] take electives to find out what you like, what you don’t like, what you’re good at, [and] what you struggle in,” Larson said.
