In a few months, if you were to skip school and walk into Target during the sixth hour, you might run into junior Hayley Gorski hard at work. Normally the notion of running into a student while they work during school hours would be strange. But due to Hayley’s future participation in FHC’s Work Experience, she will leave school an hour early to go to work.

The class may not start until January, but Hayley can hardly wait.

“I’m definitely excited,” Hayley said. “It’s definitely going to be nice to get out of school an hour early, and I feel like it will help me with school overall.”

Work Experience is a class at FHC that allows students who are working to either leave school an hour earlier or come an hour later so that they can work. To take the class, you must log at least ten hours of work a week and have taken or be taking a business class.

Hayley said many others found the class extremely helpful and enjoyable.

“I’ve had friends who have done it in the past,” Hayley said, “[like] upperclassmen who I have been friends with. It seems like it really helps lighten the load of work.”

Hayley doesn’t believe that there are any negatives to taking Work Experience, but counselor Kyle Perkins sees both sides.

“It gets students some real work experience,” Perkins said. “It allows them to start building relationships with businesses and organizations or continue to cultivate those that they already have. It also allows them to make some money. I’d say the cons are that they sometimes miss out on a few things because work experience is typically scheduled for their sixth hour of the day. So they leave and miss out on assemblies or other school events.”

If Work Experience isn’t exactly what you’re looking for though, there is another option very similar to it.

“There are actually two classes,” Perkins said. “There’s Work Experience and Cooperative Education (CO-OP). Work experience counts for one class here, so a half credit. You need an average of 10 hours a week and have to have taken or be taking a business related course. And then there’s CO-OP, which counts for two classes here so it’s a one point credit. You have to average fifteen work hours a week and be currently taking a business-related course. So slight differences.”

So as crazy as school may get for Hayley, she has next semester to look forward to when she’ll get to make a little extra money while also taking some of the many pressures of high school off her shoulders.

“I think it will give me some extra time to get homework done and get my life more organized,” Hayley said. “Because it does get really busy when I’m working and doing school and everything else that is required to be a teenager.”