My next outreach experience was visiting a high school AP Computer Science class. In the future, I'll be visiting the class weekly to offer guidance on coding projects and to hopefully serve as a role model to the students. For this experience, I just talked a bit about my own experience in Computer Science (CS) and then the students asked me questions.
After discussing my experience in CS, I shared a project called evil hangman that I let them play along with. A lot of their questions were concerns about the cost of college. They also asked about whether you have to pick your major right away, as I presume some of them aren't sure what they want to do yet. I am a proponent of college but I think the pressure we put on 17 and 18 year olds to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives is unrealistic. The money component of it is also a hurdle for many. If parents have not saved for their child's college education, many kids have to pay for it themselves. One big challenge with this is that those many of those students have to work significant hours during college, which gives them less time for school.
Overall, the students were moderately engaged, presumably a result of being in that class with their peers since August. Remembering back to my high school days, I wonder if the discomfort at the JeffCon Event was a result of the students not knowing each other. Anyways, I'm excited to start working with this class and helping out as best I can, but most importantly letting them know about all the opportunities in CS if that's a path they are interested in pursuing.