What's the first thing the Red duster had said?

Usually Lexus forms fogs Right, at about what temperature?

39, 40, 40 degrees.

Any rear slightly.

Not very much.

Right.

I just think it's a very good chance for people to get out into the world and see what they really want to do.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a lab technician or not, but being here, I'm positive now that this is the work that I really want to do.

Terry Schmichty, hasn't heard a school bell, taken an exam or seen a blackboard in months, but she's seen a lot of Doctor Major Cohn's laboratory at Magee Women's Hospital.

Terry is involved in a study of pain, and we are actively looking for compounds that are non addictive, compounds that will relieve pain so that hopefully sometime in the future, the narcotic drugs can be replaced by other compounds that are safer.

Well the rat is on an analgesic meter which detects pain.

We're using different drugs that we inject them with.

I watch to see what he does, and I write it down in a notebook.

And then after I'm done, I take apply it, temperature versus time on a graph.

Terry has seen a lot of test tubes, chemicals, charts and rats during senior semester, but more important, she's had a five month, eight hour a day, five day a week look at the career she wants to pursue.

When she goes to Carlow College this fall, you'll have a good idea of where she's going.

And that critical move into the adult world may be a little bit easier, thanks to what she's already been through.

It's it's hard when you're 17 to be, you know, thrown out into the world among adults and everything like that, especially when you're used to being around other 17 year old kids who are, I don't know, you just have fun with going out, you know, and joking around and everything where you'd have to be a little bit more serious when you're with adults and, more mature.

And sometimes that's that's hard when you're used to being with 17 year old kids.

These are the radios you're going to put in out at the, a radiate job.

Okay.

I'll put them on a packet.

Thank you.

Okay.

Feels like I've been doing this for more than I really have, like, just for a few months, 4 or 5 months.

But, it really feels like I'm a really older person, you know, like, one day I was in high school, the next day, you know, like, I'm out on the world.

I'm out in the world on my own job.

When John Probdicka entered the last half of his senior year at McKeesport high, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to go to college or get a job.

The one thing he was sure of was that he enjoyed working with his hands.

So he got into the senior semester program in the hope that it might help him decide.

An interest in electricity led him to a job with an electrical contractor in McKeesport.

Each day he goes out with any electrician.

This particular day to install a remote controlled garage door opener.

I was a little bit frightened and a little bit everything, but, coming home the first day, you know, like, I was really, wow, you know, I met all these guys today and all this stuff, you know, now I feel like a real working man now.

And it was really a, an exciting experience.

Would you raise this operator?

So, like I can slide this board under.

Okay.

The senior semester programs, are programs.

that should have been started years ago.

Our educational system has produced too darn many chiefs already than Indians.

It's about time we had some Indians who are a credit because a good electrician or a good workman today on our society can make a very, very good living.

If two people go out looking for a job.

Now, a high school student, another high school student has been on senior semester.

The student thats been on senior semester.

Definitely.

I'm positive it has an advantage over that other person that just come out of high school, and was never on senior semester.

But it will ask you to kind of look back on some of the things you did and some kind of judgments you make about, your placement, the things that you did there, the things that you like, some decisions you made about those placements, whether you want to continue in that direction or whether you want to go somewhere else.

The closest the senior semester students come to a classroom experience is a two hour seminar once a week, where they discuss their problems and evaluate their progress.

Im proud about myself mostly too that I don't have as much patience as I thought I had found a lot of lacks in my own personality, but then I found a lot of gains too.

As far as I was concerned, it was the, the separation of youth from adults that's bothered me for a long time.

And, students were in school all of this time, and then suddenly came graduation day, and they were supposed to, pick up and buy into the system.

I learned a lot about not just my job, but other people's jobs and how they work.

And secondly, I think that I learned a lot about other people because being out a lot, I'm in contact with a lot of people, not just, homeowners, but businessmen too.

Right?

Hows it working?

Okay.

We feel we have to be in control, that we have to kind of have parameters around with kids or should learn some.

Well, it turns out I don't think you need to if you don't have to, have kids punching in and so on, that there are other things then that make the kid turn up.

He doesn't want to fall flat on his face with that boss.

So to speak, with those adults.

So that's what keeps the student, doing what teachers think you have to do by having the tests.

They understand that they now have a responsibility similar to one that they would have in any job in the community, whether they worked in an office, in a factory, or they even continued in school.

They have a work responsibility.

And sometimes the adjustment has been traumatic for them.

Well, sometimes things don't go so hot in the lab and there may be some confusion or something.

And it's hard because I'm not I haven't got down, you know, to keep my cool and be quiet and stuff like, and sometimes I shoot off when I shouldn't.

But other than that, everything's pretty cool.

We should ultimately, I hope, have some some better human beings out of the whole process.

If what we saw happening is really making some difference in the lives of students.