SET Day 2013
By Ainslee Heim

SET Day Essay Competition winner Ainslee Heim is a grade 11 student at Kelvin High School in Winnipeg.

With our final year of high school just around the corner, everyone is starting to feel the pressure of deciding what we want to do with our lives. Now is a good time to start making good choices, say our teachers, now is the time to start taking things seriously.

But, it’s difficult to work hard if you’re not sure what you’re working towards, if you’re missing a direction. When the opportunity to go to SET Day came up, I jumped at the chance. I wanted every possible way of getting  more insight on what I want to do with my life before I have to start making choices for the years to come.

The most inspiring part of SET Day for me, was listening to the speakers. It was a chance to see what was really out there and hear firsthand how we ourselves could make a difference in someone’s life while pursuing education and careers.

I’ve always wanted to do something meaningful and beneficial to others with my life. Hearing Gordon Geisbrecht speak about how he has used his research on cold-water survival to help save peoples’ lives was exactly the kind of thing I was interested in. The extreme conditions he put himself through in dedication to his research was incredibly inspiring. The kind of commitment it takes to willingly make yourself hypothermic over 30 times is incredible. It goes to show how hard work pays off because he has been successful in changing regulations in regards to people trapped in sinking cars because of his research, regulations that will go on to save lives. His speech made me see that it is possible to work in an area that is of interest to you, while at the same time, making a positive contribution to society.

Making a difference in a few lives is one thing, making a difference on a global scale is something entirely different. Conducting research on species populations and how changing habitats affect these populations can give a lot of insight into how our planet is changing. This is the other area of education that really interests me to follow, after high school. When Emily Choy began her presentation on the research she conducted on Beluga Whales in Nunavut I was excited to hear more. She talked about her time in the Arctic, both relating directly to the research, the experiences she had with wild animals and the team she was researching with, like days with  24 hours of sunlight and baseball on the tundra. Knowing that there are opportunities to travel and see more of the world while learning and discovering important information is incredibly exciting. For me, chances like this would feel like amazing and valuable life experiences, while at the same time having a chance to make a difference in the world.

I came away from SET Day feeling  a lot more confident about what my future holds. Not because I made any decisions about what I want to do after high school, but because I learned there are so many possibilities of what I can do. Having the chance to hear about real opportunities and different fields of education from students and professors made me realize that it would be hard to go in the wrong direction. For me, SET Day helped close the gap between just thinking about my future and really being able to see what I can do with my life.