Gaining a taste of the field

Hewlett High School students were given a taste of the real world as they spent the last year of their high school careers at an internship or conducting a project. Completed Senior Experience work was presented at the third annual Senior Year Fair on June 1.

The hallways of the high school were lined with professionally dressed seniors standing in front of poster boards with explanations of how they spent the past nine months. Senior Matthew Nir interned at Mediacom Digital in Manhattan, a media planning and buying company, and helped develop advertising budgets for various media such as television and the Internet. “I also did market research about Samsung, which is Dell’s biggest competition aside from Apple,” he said. “The best thing was the connections I made and I learned the best time to advertise for the Christmas holidays is five weeks before Black Friday.”

Nir, who will attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said he learned that in marketing and advertising it’s important to be innovative as no one wants to see the same idea repeated. In college he plans to take business and communications classes to work toward his dream job. “I’d love to be the CEO of Apple,” he said.

Monica Sigler interned at Five Towns Orthodontics in Hewlett in hopes of discovering a new division within the medical field. “I put on scrubs and went in for a few months every Monday,” she said. “I want to do something with medicine and I was able to try it out and see if I like it and it’s definitely something I’m going to consider.”

Sigler, who will be attending Marist College as a biomedicine major, enjoyed helping patients and seeing their teeth transform. “My advice for the juniors who will be doing their Senior Experiences next year is to try something even if you’re not sure about it,” she said. “I needed to see what types of jobs I like more.”

Seeing the production end and shadowing an engineer at a lighting company in Brentwood was quite the experience for Hunter Gildin. “I was shown the software used to design products and saw what problems arise when designing products,” he said. “I got a good look at the business and learned a lot about the production process.”

Gildin, who also will be attending Vanderbilt University, plans to major in civil engineering or computer science at the school of engineering. “I want to use my talents to better the world,” he said. “I want to find new advances and create something original.”

Sabrina Acks interned in the marketing department at the Cedarhurst-based Jildor Shoes and was in charge of putting together a stylebook with pictures of the latest shoe styles and accessories. “It gave me a taste of the field and I’m thinking about going into advertising,” she said. “I learned to be more organized and I got a big boost of confidence when I was complimented on my ideas.”

Acks, who will be studying at Binghamton in the fall, advises students doing their Senior Experience to do something they love. “I wanted to do something creative and this gave me an idea of what I want to do,” she said. “You need to love what you do.”