When senior year begins for Hollis Brookline students, the race to find a career path is on. Even though some seniors know exactly what they want to do with their time after high school, it can still be very hard for students to gain experience in their potential field. To help these students through this different time, Hollis Brookline offers a course known as Senior Quest.

Senior Quest is a project-based class, and for the most part is independently directed by the student taking it. The premise is that a senior taking the class can choose a subject of interest to explore further through a project they design about the subject. It is a year-long course that ends with the student giving some sort of final presentation on what they learned and accomplished throughout the year (and possibly how it changed them).

The CavChron will be covering the progress of the students in the 2016-2017 Senior Quest as they explore their subjects of interest, beginning with senior Drew Gillis.

How does one correlate college and national football? Gillis was wondering the same and is currently focusing on the recruitment process. After developing his ideas, Gillis has determined that he wants to conduct a series of interviews with those involved in college and national football in order to write, said Gillis, “an anthology of how [college football] recruiting has changed.” One of the focuses of Senior Quest is to prepare for a career after high school, and Gillis wants to go into sports management next year when he attends the University of Alabama. He believes that studying the recruitment process this year will help him to “learn more about what athletes go through.”

Most recently, Gillis has begun the process of setting up interviews with TJ Rushing (former Super Bowl champ) and Geo and Mike Scannell (former college football tight ends, and Villanova coaches). Gillis has also begun to determine his questions for these interviews and will be finalizing these in the days to come.

When asked about his opinion of Senior Quest, Gillis said it was unlike most classes because it helps students to “focus on a specific interest and acquire real world skills.” His opinion on the class so far is very positive and he is hoping this will help to focus his interest in sports management, build a resume, and make connections in the field.