There is a constant thought looming over every junior and senior’s head during their final years of high school: What am I going to do when I graduate from Franklin High School?
There are so many things you have to think about when you think about college: your major, your budget, and of course, location, location, location. Luckily, there are events such as the Wisconsin Education Fair, (or WEF for short), in which colleges from all over the midwest come to Franklin High School to show you all of their strengths: their prime location, their offered majors, and the financial aid you could receive if you go to their college. It’s a lot of information packed into small 5-10 minute discussions that go through all of the aforementioned topics and so much more.
I had the opportunity of attending the WEF, and I wanted to share my (albeit biased) thoughts on how it not only benefited me, but how it could benefit others as well.
The fair is organized into rows of colleges and the people representing them, in no particular order. You could go past the table for UWM and then immediately next to it was the table for Winona State University. It wasn’t exclusively public universities either, there were private colleges being represented, as well as various military branches as a post-secondary option as well if college isn’t your thing.
At first sight, it was very intimidating, seeing the rows and rows of different colleges, the lines of people waiting their turn to see what each one had to offer them. I was terrified of going up to any of them for no reason other than not knowing how to initiate the conversation. But once I initiated that first interaction, once I gathered up the courage to talk to one of the college representatives, I began to get into the swing of it. My desire for information snowballed from the first “I wonder what this well known college has to tell me” and eventually grew to “‘I’ve never heard of this school, I wonder what it might have to offer!”
It is important to know that this was simply my experience with this particular college fair, and that you and others may not have the same experience as I did. I did not intend for this article to be the be-all-end-all explanation of college fairs
It’s a daunting question, asking yourself what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, but you don’t have to face it alone. There are many places you can go, such as the WEF or student services here at the high school, that can help you to narrow down your options for your post-secondary life.