Education is an important value at Pickering Associates, and job shadowing is a key component in education for a young adult to experience different career options. Pickering Associates has always encouraged job shadowing and usually have more than a dozen young students a year come to shadow employees. This past month we hosted two 7th grade students from Fort Frye High School, who shadowed the plumbing and structural departments. Pat Flora, the Plumbing department manager, and Eric Smith, Structural department manager, were able to interact with the students and show them different aspects of their careers. They were able to take them to meetings with other departments, experiment with drawings of various projects, witness and experience 3D modeling capabilities, and see full project visuals from beginning at blueprint stages to what it looks like as an end result in real life. When asked how the day went with the students, Mr. Flora commented “it was a great day, we really enjoy being able to share our work and it’s fun to explain what we do at a different age level than what we are used to. It gives us a different perspective.” “We really wanted the kids to understand the importance of teamwork in this career,” mentioned Mr. Smith, “our jobs rely a great deal on teamwork with in departments, and we wanted the students to be able to experience examples of that teamwork on our various projects.” Both managers commented that they enjoy having students there and being able to give back to the community. Though the students were required by their school to complete a job shadowing experience, the young students had to take the initiative to call and set up everything with Pickering Associates on their own. The students still have time to consider their career path, but we are always looking forward to potentially hosting shadow students as interns someday. Thank you to Mr. Flora and Mr. Smith for hosting the students and showing them what it’s like to work at Pickering Associates.