Mar 2 - 1Most kids from Chicago have the dream of becoming a professional athlete because it’s the quickest and most guaranteed career that’s tangible. Albeit I was hoping this wasn’t the case all over Chicago but it looks like I was wrong. The first day of class I asked the Brothers what did they want to be when they grew up. Most of them said some type of professional athlete. When I asked them why, all the answers were the same because of the money, fame, and how quick you start your career compared to other careers. My goal was to get them educated about other career paths and knowledgeable about a current disease that’s causing a lot of professional athletes to retire early. This disease is called CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) when too many concussions happen to the brain it starts to self-destruct itself. This may not sound like a severe problem but the bad thing about this disease is that it’s undetectable on a concussion scanner. The only way you will know if you have CTE is after death when your brain is examined. This is the information I wanted the Brothers to know because you have visible injuries like broken bones, fractures, and sickness but what about the undetectable diseases.

During February the Brothers have had two visitors both engineers in different fields. The brothers were able to see different career paths and what they actually go through. We were able to do a competition when our bio-engineer Bryant came to let the Brothers show some of their creativity when working in groups. Bryant brought some used scrap wood, glue guns, and other small items for the Brothers to build with. The competition was a success with the brothers voting for their favorite sculpture. This activity forced the boys to be creative in a limited amount of time with a full team to work with. Our last engineer Kelsey who’s a civil engineer had the boys go through a laborious activity. Some gave up and some continued but for sure this was their least favorite activity. Kelsey brought some blueprint layouts of the city and asked the Brothers for the cost of a sewer line that ran through a park. With limited time and materials the boys quickly got frustrated but all of the teams pulled out and finished. Only one team got the correct answer number for number, but the other teams were very close. What the Brothers gained form this activity was the different career options in engineering and how to work with numbers under pressure.

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