“Seeing different jobs in real-life is important to getting to know more realistically, rather than just conceptually, what people actually do with their day.”
Raeann Philbrook, an Ignite Industry Mentor since 2021, starts each year by identifying what her Ignite student would like to get out of meeting. “They all have different questions and are in different places in the process,” says Philbrook. Some students are further in the process of knowing what they want to pursue, and are looking for input on what jobs to apply for, what offers to dig into, and what jobs to accept. Other students are earlier in the process and benefit from analyzing what they like about what they are doing now and how that might translate into an actual job.
This fall, Philbrook invited her Ignite student to visit her job site and see the project she is working on. The visit was designed to help give a broader understanding of the systems her Ignite student, a mechanical engineering major, could be designing and how they interact with buildings. “Doing a site walk and seeing what one small niche of mechanical engineering could look like was helpful to generate other questions and start to highlight to her other things that mattered to her that she maybe hadn’t thought of before.”
“I try to use my context to provide insight into what it’s like to have a career. Students can do internships and informational interviews – which are great – but very different from what it will be like to have a career job with a set schedule and a singular focus that impacts your community, spiritual life, and the bulk of your time.”
Because students often have only a vague sense of what certain jobs entail, they benefit greatly from getting real-world context for what it’s actually like to work at a specific job with a set schedule and singular focus. For Philbrooks’s Ignite student, the site walk was instrumental in helping her realize what a career in that specific niche of mechanical engineering might look like, which in turn, informed her decisions on what jobs to apply for.
“I had internships and I had a really solid mentor at my first job who was instrumental in helping me get my footing, but that was when I was already out there [in industry],” recounts Philbrook. “That was great, but for students to get pre-game preparation is huge because then they can kind of direct where they are going before they get there and course-correct as needed.”
Raeann Philbrook, a 2017 George Fox alumna, describes herself as a self-proclaimed adventurous nerd. She loves being outside, and almost equally loves figuring out how things work and how to make them more efficient. She is a musician, and deeply values time spent at church serving on the worship team. Raeann was born and raised in Oregon, spending her childhood in Bend exploring caves, climbing trees, and falling in love with mountains. She is a board game enthusiast, and an aspiring home chef. She currently works as a Construction Manager at Swinterton Builders.