10th Grade Work Based Learning

AFRL GRILL Job Shadow Experience

On January 18th, myself and a group of other students interested in the field of game creation and developement completed a job shadow experience at the Air Force Research Lab's Gaming Research Integreation for Learning Laboratory (AFRL GRILL). At the GRILL, we learned about how a lot of developers make games using Unreal Engine 5, a game developement platform made by Epic Games. I chose this field and company because they make realistic simulations and games for education and training, as well as other contract work. I am really interested in the game developement and computer science fields, and if I can make games that are fun but also help people learn, I'm all for it. I did job shadow with them in my freshman year, but I returned as a sophomore to learn more advanced techniques and processes and to delv more into the game developement field as a career.

Job Shadow Growth

During this year's job shadow, I made a pretty good amount of growth, especially in collaboration. During the game developement process, there were a lot of questions that I had for the employees and mentors.

Unfortunately, there were too many people with other questions and problems to help all at once, so I was left to try and figure most things out on my own.

Fortunately, I had enough other peers around me that we were able to put our heads together and work through all of our problems wih each of our own unique skill sets.

This really helped smooth the process, as well as making us all more self-sufficient in advocating for ourselves.