It was a slow day. The clock ticked, feet shifted position as glazed over eyes dully watched daytime television. Suddenly the phone rang, immediately initiating action into all in the room. A few wasted seconds could be the difference between life and death.
“A guy had a seizure and we had to go get him into the ambulance.” Kate Mendenhall ‘13 said. “Then they gave him an IV and we took him to the hospital. All of this was happening while everyone else was at school!”
However, missing school and riding in an ambulance is not an everyday occurrence for Mendenhall, this was a job shadow experience with emergency medical technicians. Job shadows are, in a nutshell, going out on a given day and learning about a profession first hand. They are available to juniors and seniors at Tate, West, and City High, through Iowa City’s Workplace Learning Connection.
In recent years, demand has grown for job shadows as students seek new ways to gain insight into possible professions, as well as requests for doctors and other specific physician fields ranked 5th on the popularity scale with 58 requests for shadows. Other leading job shadow requests include teacher, law enforcement, and engineer, engineer leading the pack with 131 total requests last year.
In Mendenhall’s case, she followed EMTs through an emergency call and other common emergency medical situations. Although most would assume that working with EMTs would be action packed, Mendenhall experienced quite the contrary. In fact, she found that much of her time on site was spent idly, with occasional fast-paced breaks in the mainly stagnant atmosphere.
“It was a bit boring,” Mendenhall remarked. “We just kind of sat around because we only had one call.” She cited the midweek date and time of day as reasons for which action lacked. Despite that (the lack of commotion,) she still said she would certainly recommend job shadows to others.
“They (job shadows) are just cool things to do. You learn a lot, and they look good on a resume, what’s not to like?”