COOL Week is a structured work-based experience for seniors all over the district. This internship experience is held within a two week window of Feb. 24-28 or March 2-6. 

One hundred forty seniors applied to participate in COOL Week this year. Students who apply are given a placement in an industry that they have an interest in, and placements range in terms of distance from the students homes and how long each placement is. Some placements are one day long, while some take the whole week window. 

“COOL week was a great opportunity to experience a modern marketing workspace, and I appreciate being involved,” senior Garrett Powell said about his COOL Week experience at Dell.

The experience helps to give students a better understanding of a career they are interested in, so they can grasp if it is something they want to pursue in college or trade school. Career fields range from education and marketing, to medical, financial, and computer science and design.

“It definitely helped me whittle down what I want to do with my degree because I enjoyed the material we were given,” Powell said. “I’m still majoring in business management, but I want to use that in a marketing space.” 

Students engage in different activities put in place by businesses to learn what the career entails.

“We were tasked with creating a SXSWgaming event for Dell’s Alienware brand,” Powell said. “We then had to present our idea to a group from the marketing dept.” 

The experience also teaches students about new aspects of their desired careers they may not have known before.

“I learned about the various marketing groups Dell has, and I learned that I don’t want to be in event marketing,” he said. “I realized I prefer product marketing. Since I enjoyed the products we were marketing, and I was a part of the culture we were marketing to, I’ve realized I can use my business skills in an industry that I’m interested in, and enjoy every minute of it.”