This fall, the college and career center will celebrate the return of its career mentorship program, which they introduced last year.

“Our main goal is to connect students’ interests with career opportunities in a casual way that will help them to build relationships and network with professionals in a business setting,” said Ann Bergen, college and career specialist and co-founder of the program.

In order to participate, students must fill out an application, which will determine their field of interest and and mentor.

“I was hoping to try the program out this year because I’ve always been interested in teaching and this would give me the chance to see if it’s a career I could actually pursue,” said senior Zoe Bowman.

Once students finish their applications, the information is used to select the best fitting mentor from the database.  

“I requested a mentor in the medical field because it’s always been a dream of mine to pursue a medically oriented career. I was paired with Dr. Liem, a dermatologist surgeon based in Newport Beach,” said high school senior Anjelique Alexander.

Over the course of the program, mentors meet with their mentees four times or more and spend a minimum of 10 hours together. After the initial interview, the student will be able to do up to four, two-hour job shadows and one casual meeting to get acquainted in a social setting.

“My favorite experience was observing the exclusions, which were the removal of malignant skin cancer tumors,” said Alexander. “Dr. Liem had to cut around the removal site, excise the tumor and stitch the wound. I witnessed three or four excisions during my mentorship.”

Last Fall, the program succeeded in placing 10 Laguna Beach students with mentors; however, the program is set to broaden and match even more this year.

“I wish we would have matched more students; again, it was a building year, so it was very small, but we are hoping to expand and match 100% of our students, so we are in the process of building our database of mentors to match students.” said Bergen.

This program is invaluable as it provides students with opportunities to explore career interests and build experiences before the time that they even graduate high school.

“The experience definitely, 100%, provided me with a better insight on what type of career path I wanted to follow. I was excited for every opportunity to observe and learn because I was put in realistic situations where you have to learn how to adapt and handle people’s health,” said Alexander.