About once a month, each student in State High is required to go to long homeroom. Each grade completes different assignments and looks at different presentations, but all students are required to use Xello — a career planning program designed to educate students on potential jobs in the future. Completing certain assignments in Xello is a requirement for students as assigned by the PA government, but not everyone believes Xello is that helpful for planning their futures.

Sophomore Simon Vath believes that Xello hasn’t done that much to help him. “I feel that it hasn’t impacted my highschool career much,” Vath said. “It has given me some ideas for career planning, but it hasn’t given any sort of guidance on how to achieve the goals to reach that career.”

Junior Jayson Lu disagrees with Vath’s sentiment, as he believes that Xello has really helped his career planning.

“Xello has positively impacted my career planning process because it has exposed me to a bunch of careers that I did not know much about before,” Lu said.

Vath and Lu are both correct in identifying Xello’s strengths and weaknesses. It has helped many kids find new, interesting careers. In addition, it gives thorough information about those careers; but many students wish the program expanded far past that.

Nevertheless, Lu mentioned that Xello gives “information on salary, necessary background education, and similar jobs.” While all of that is certainly helpful information, most students will need to do much more research on their own in order to truly understand succeeding in certain careers.  If Xello added information on what college courses to take, or where people can train or find internships for those careers, that would certainly benefit students.

Many students don’t believe that Xello should be required.

“I think students shouldn’t be required to use Xello,” Lu stated, “but if they weren’t required to, I think many would choose not to and eventually miss out on a lot of unique information.”

Lu brings up another valuable point that many students may fail to consider. Even if Xello isn’t the most enjoyable platform, if it was optional, students probably wouldn’t do much career planning outside of school. They might not do any before their senior year and be left confused about their future after high school. There is definitely valuable information on Xello that is worth looking into, and taking the time to do Xello would actually benefit students more than they might think.

Every student processes the information differently. What is helpful and valuable to one might not be to another. “It might give some kids guidance on careers and college,” Vath said, “but for most of us it doesn’t make a big difference.”

Whether or not you enjoy using Xello, it is definitely worth it because of all of the different careers it shows. Hopefully, Xello continues expanding upon the program by adding even more information that relates to each career so that students can maximize their opportunities and fully understand each career path and how to begin traveling down that path.