Every February, Leander ISD allows students to take a break from education and step out into the real world.

This is COOL Week, which stands for Career Opportunities on Location, and I was fortunate enough to participate in the program. This year’s program lasted from February 6-10, which is also the week of LISD’s February Conference.

Because I want to be a journalist or broadcaster, I worked with two different companies: Entercom Radio and Fox 7 Austin.

I worked at Entercom on February 7 and 8. While being a radio broadcaster is not my first choice of career, it is still a backup option. It was nice to see what the radio industry is like in my two days at the station.

I shadowed people from the broadcasting, advertising, talk radio, sales, IT and traffic departments, which gave me a perspective about the work these people do on a daily basis.

The departments which interested me the most were broadcasting and advertising. When I worked with broadcasting, I watched how popular radio hosts carry out their jobs. My favorite radio host at Entercom was Snoop Daniel, who runs Friday Night Fanstand and a local R&B station. He has a funny personality and it was enjoyable to talk about the radio industry and sports in general.

While I am not particularly interested in advertising, it was cool to see how companies pay for ads and how the ads are played on stations. I actually got to practice recording a lottery ad to see what it is like to announce an advertisement.

After my two days with Entercom, I went downtown to work with Fox 7 Austin. While I enjoyed my time at Entercom, my two days at Fox 7 were the highlight of COOL Week.

Sports broadcasting is my first choice of careers, so I learned a lot from shadowing the sports anchors at the station.

The anchor for both of the days that I was present was John Hygh, who has been with Fox 7 since 2006. He is very experienced, so it was nice to get career advice from him and learn how the sports segment is produced.

Something else I got to experience at Fox 7 was the photography element of sports journalism. This was neat because I have never been too interested in photography, but I discovered that Joe Salazar, the main sports photographer at Fox 7, has a cool job. He showed me all of the cool events he has covered in his career and told me how to take a great sports photo.

While I did sacrifice a day of February Conference, I learned a lot in my four days at COOL Week. I would encourage COOL Week to everyone because it is great experience and a resume booster.