Podcast Summary:
What happens when career exploration meets lakeside adventure? At State Services for the Blind’s first Career Exploration Adventure Weekend at Cragun’s Resort, blind, low-vision, and DeafBlind students from across Minnesota discovered possibilities, practiced independence, and built friendships. Randi Lasher shares how the three-day event combined customized job shadowing, a career panel, orientation and mobility activities, buffet navigation, networking, and time to connect with peers. Students Sophia and Riley offer candid perspectives on exploring careers, preparing for college, managing busy schedules, and learning to advocate for their futures. Their message to students is simple: you do not need your career figured out, but now is the time to start exploring. For parents, Riley offers an equally important reminder—create opportunities, encourage independence, and never let limited expectations diminish motivation. Hear how one weekend helped students gain confidence, clarify goals, and imagine what may come next for them in school, work, and life.
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To find out more about the services provided at State Services for the Blind, and what they can do for you, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or call Shane at 651-385-5205.
Full Transcript:
Jeff: In this podcast episode from State Services for the Blind in Minnesota, we’re going to be talking about an event that happened in Brainerd, Minnesota, at the Cragun’s Resort. It was the career exploration adventure event where blind, visually impaired, deaf, blind students gathered and got to do some career exploration and meet up with professionals in the industry, have conversations and ask questions about their journeys, their careers. And be sure to check out the next episode where we bring you the entire career panel experience. So without further ado, here’s a conversation with Randi Lasher, Sophia and Riley about the Career Exploration Adventure Event. We hope you enjoy.
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Sophia: I would recommend this to a friend, and I would talk about the many opportunities to not only connect with other people, but to learn from others and the like many different opinions, but then different experiences that people have.
Riley: If you’re going to come to this camp, you need to figure out. You need to have a general idea. Yeah. Sometimes if you’re a sophomore in high school, you don’t really know what you’re going to do. That’s where you have to start going for it. And I think as parents, like try to figure out what your son or daughter that’s visually impaired wants to do and even incited people to, because when you can put those opportunities in front of them, they’re a lot more apt to take advantage of those and not be a junior or senior in high school and be like, what do I want to do?
Randi: We’re already planning for 2027 events, so hopefully we can get some more students connected next year and continue the learning, continue the fun.
Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson, and today in the studio we have Randi Lasher and she’s a Transition Work Opportunities Navigator at State Services for the Blind. Randi welcome to Blind Abilities.
Randi: Thanks for having me Jeff.
Jeff: Well, you had an event way up north. Way up north. But it was similar to something they have in the Twin Cities here. Can you tell us about it?
Randi: I sure can. First of all, I would not say it’s way up north. Being from the Brainerd Lakes area where our event was held, I think we’re pretty central actually. But for many across the state, Brainerd is considered up north. But we held an event earlier this month. It was the first weekend in August. We had what we called the Career Exploration Adventure Weekend at Cragun’s Resort here in the Brainerd Lakes area.
Jeff: I think it’s really great that it was situated in a location that is more central to, you know, considering that Minneapolis-Saint Paul is the hub and everything seems to happen here, but this gives others an opportunity probably to get to that location easier.
Randi: Absolutely. Yeah. And actually, this event was more or less born out of feedback that I’ve been getting from students. Being that the work that I do is primarily in central and northern Minnesota. I hear from a lot of our students in, quote unquote, greater Minnesota that they wish that there were more opportunities in their area, in their communities. And so, wanting to meet that need, we came up with a plan to execute an event that is more northern based, hoping to appeal to a maybe a different audience. But that said, we had students from all across the state that joined us, which was just fantastic. We had just under a dozen students that joined. And yeah, certainly from all over. We had folks from Bemidji, Duluth way down to Rochester. So we captured a good audience, especially for the first event of this kind. And, and as I said, the focus was career exploration. So we had a jam packed schedule loading students up with information about career exploration. And for those that were undecided, giving them maybe a little flavor of some career possibilities that they might want to explore more.
Jeff: Oh, great. And this wasn’t just a couple hour deal. This was a three day event.
Randi: Yeah. Yep. So that was a unique kind of facet of the experience as it was at a resort. And it was Friday through Sunday. So just really fabulous. You know, like accommodations to get to stay, uh, in the Brainerd Lakes area, the place where people love to vacation during a really beautiful time of summer. That in and of itself was awesome, but having the event spread over the course of three days really allowed us to get a lot of instruction to the students as well. We had a careers panel where we highlighted five different career pathways from staff that worked at Cragun’s to various business professionals in the community. And then we also had job shadowing for students as well on Saturday, in addition to career exploration, being that we were at a resort and there’s lots of opportunities to practice and build skills with orientation, mobility, we wanted to capitalize on that for students. So we had a scavenger hunt that we did on Friday night, helping to kind of set the stage and have students get their feet wet a little bit with the, you know, the general lay of the land, if you will. Of course, that ended with some fun, fun treats and prizes they could find along the way. And then we also had an activity on Saturday that was orientation mobility focused using also music and movement. So we used large exercise balls and drumsticks. And our own Jenny Pelletier with SSB kind of led the students in this instructional fun, you know, music movement activity and talked about the transferable skills with orientation mobility, using, you know, cardinal directions, for example, and just really attending to your surroundings, paying attention to directions, things like that.
Jeff: Tell me about the job shadowing.
Randi: Yeah. So as best as I could, I tried to pair students with a community member that had a career that aligned with the students expressed interest area. Again, we had some students that were undecided. But for those that had voiced, you know, I’m interested in in this or that career pathway. We had a business professional from the Brainerd Lakes area that came on site and met with students for about two hours. And every student had been kind of that customized job shadowing experience where they were able to ask direct questions, do some hands on activities, was really unique to the specific job that was being highlighted. And then again, for those that were undecided, students were able to be a part of the group that was led by one of Cragun’s staff, who took them around on a tour of the resort, and was able to highlight a variety of different career possibilities, as resorts are kind of their own little ecosystem in that sense that, you know, you don’t you don’t realize all the job possibilities that are there until you really kind of peel back the veil. But there’s accounting, there’s IT, there’s customer service, there’s hospitality, there’s food service, there’s maintenance, there’s so much more. And so that group was able to experience, you know, kind of a little bit of all that the resort has to offer as far as job and career possibilities.
Randi: Students had the opportunity to just enjoy spending time at a resort. You know, we talked about the importance of students building and kind of maintaining or reconnecting with friends from across the state. And so it was really great to just see for the limited downtime that we had students being able to like relax by the fire, you know, at the lakeside at the resort just was really wonderful. And, you know, we tried to scatter a lot of different instructional opportunities in that maybe weren’t directly career related, but are helping to build skills that are going to be really foundational for students just setting themselves up for success in all areas of life. And one other thing that we had heard as an area of need was students getting practice with navigating a buffet line. So we actually had the opportunity for students to do that three different times throughout the weekend. We did breakfast buffet at the resort, and then we went out to Pizza Ranch on Saturday night. And those were kind of the more like informal, fun opportunities, just as we’re sharing meals together. But also, I think important to underscore like true skills that are being learned for something that can be really tricky to navigate as someone who’s blind or low vision buffet is no small feat. And so we wanted to again, try and address those needs that we were hearing from students.
Jeff: Wow. That’s a that’s a tall task. The buffet. That’s a good one. Yes, that’s a good one.
Randi: So it was a it was a very full weekend. I heard from many students that they were pretty tired out afterward and would have liked to maybe have some more downtime, but I also think that’s a success in that we get a lot in, in not, not too, too long of a time. So that was good.
Jeff: Well, I think it’s really great. Like you said, they get to meet other students who are Blind, visually impaired, DeafBlind that they typically wouldn’t meet because a lot of students are stuck in their districts and they don’t get to meet other students who are in similar situations and, you know, share ideas and findings that, you know, they’ve discovered. So this is a great opportunity to build friends, networks, and lifetime connections.
Randi: Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the big highlights as well. We heard from so many of the students. It was so great to, to meet new people, to be able to reconnect with friends that they maybe have met at other SSB sponsored events. And again, because we have people that we’re pulling in from all over the state, it was just a great opportunity to, you know, to build your network to, to be with peers. And certainly there was a lot of fun to be had for that relationship building as well.
Jeff: I really think that it was great that you brought in other people with careers to talk to so they can ask questions, and we got a lot of clips from that, that show just exactly how dynamic it was and some of the questions that the students asked and some of the details that you went through to explore. I was really excited when I heard some of these people in the career started out going to college, for one thing, but then they switched and either was, you know, one of them mentioned a teacher told them this, that the other thing and they changed their career and they’ve been doing that career for a long time. So I like the point that you don’t always have to have your decision all made before you go to college.
Randi: Yeah, absolutely. I think that was really refreshing for many of our students to hear as well, because again, we had a range of students who are pretty set in their career path of interest, you know, even ones that are already attending college for their specific program to younger students that, you know, are really just getting their feet wet and maybe are still undecided. And so regardless of kind of, you know, where students are at on that spectrum, you know, knowing that they don’t have to have it all figured out right now, really, I think can take some of that pressure off.
Jeff: I remember when I went to college, that was a long time ago, but I remember picking up generals or electives that would apply for different other fields of study that, you know, you could still use. So it was really nice to hear those panelists talk about the changes they made midstream. That was really good.
Randi: Absolutely. You know, the panel was really a great opportunity to learn from a variety of business professionals. I think one of the biggest takeaways was at the end of our conversation, just asking for some candid advice, tips and tricks that those folks would recommend for, for anyone kind of getting started on their career journey. Interested in exploring possibilities, taking some of those next steps to prepare for a successful career and a successful future.
Jeff: Well, this was great, and I heard that we’re going to get some of the students onto the podcast coming up here.
Randi: Yeah, I talked with a few that are willing to share some of their experiences just on the weekend, overall takeaways, things that they learned. And, you know, this is something that was really well received overall and that we’re hoping to replicate for years to come. We’re already planning for 2020 sevens events, so hopefully we can get some more students connected next year and continue the learning, continue the fun.
Jeff: Oh, this is great. I mean, it’s the first time up there up there. I say in central Minnesota, central, northern Minnesota and going by the feedback. And that’s what they wanted and that’s what they’re getting. And I’m going to check it out next year as well. So yeah, let’s bring in the students.
Randi: I’m happy that we had a few students interested in sharing their perspectives with us on the weekend. Some takeaways, good, bad, and otherwise that might be highlighted for others interested in what we did the other weekend. We have Sophia and Riley with us today just to, yeah, share some of their feedback and provide some insights as far as their experiences with the Career Exploration Adventure Weekend.
Jeff: Well, thank you both for taking the time to come on to Blind Abilities and sharing with us your experience at the career exploration event held by State Services for the Blind in Minnesota. And Sophia, let’s start with you. Tell us where you are on your educational journey and what are your career goals.
Sophia: I am a junior studying social work, and I want to work in a hospital setting dealing with patients that are about to be discharged.
Riley: My name is Riley. I go to Minnewaska Area High School. I’m a senior this year, and I am hoping to be a music major in accounting and finance degree as well from Saint John’s University come next year.
Jeff: First of all, let’s start off with some feedback from the event itself. I mean, the best feedback would be that you want to do it again, right?
Sophia: I felt very good about the weekend. I felt that it was a really positive experience I would do it again because I thought that it was really interesting. And I learned a lot, especially about social work and about what I can expect in the field.
Riley: For me, it was more of the overall takeaway was just kind of exploring different areas. I had already done some previous exploration at Summer Transition Program down in Saint Paul in June. So just kind of exploring more of the different fields majority for me, and probably Sophia could probably speak for both of us as we both know what we kind of want to do. We’re just trying to explore different areas or just, and then just trying to also get that experience of solidifying, okay, yes, this is what we want to do. And the panel was kind of cool too, with the different points of view. Obviously, none of them were visually impaired like us, but they’re able to come up with responses that really make sense for all of us.
Randi: If you would recommend this event to other students, what are the highlights? What are the key things that you would want to share with other students as far as why should they come? What are they going to get out of it? What are the big takeaways? That’s what I’m most curious about. And I think that’s what others would be wanting to know as well.
Sophia: I would recommend this to a friend, and I would talk about the many opportunities to not only connect with other people, but to learn from others and the like many different opinions, but then different experiences that people have, whether that was through connecting with other students or doing the job shadowing opportunity, just learning about careers, but also being able to have other experiences with people and giving them the fact that like they’ll know more about like, yeah, different careers, but also the things to be expected within different careers. And also I really enjoyed the many different activities because it gave us a chance to do different skills that are important.
Riley: Yeah, I mean, you crushed it there, Sophia, hit the nail on the head right there. I would say I’d recommend this. I kind of said the same thing about Summer Transition Program. I’d love to see if we could do a sighted version of this. And obviously just up the ante, maybe just a little bit. But to me, the biggest takeaway is that if you’re going to come to this camp, you need to figure out, you need to have a general idea. Yeah. Sometimes if you’re a sophomore in high school, you don’t really know what you’re going to do. Well, that’s where you have to start going for it. And I think as parents, like when you’re, you know, if, if and or when you listen to this, parents, like try to figure out what your son or daughter that’s visually impaired wants to do and even sighted people too, because when you can put those opportunities in front of them, they’re a lot more apt to take advantage of those and not be a junior or senior in high school and be like, what do I want to do? Another key factor is, you know, you’re kind of practicing independent living skills on your own, yet your hotel rooms are not apartments by any stretch of the imagination. You have all your meals prepared and whatnot, but you got to be able to function high enough to where you are responsible. You’re able to get up on time, you’re able to get to where you need to be on time. It’s kind of like class, but like I said, it’s independent living skills. You’re kind of reinforcing also being organized, timely, and then also just being mature kids as well, just to kind of be with the general people that are passing you in the hallways or whatever it may be.
Sophia: I really like how you prased that.
Randi: Yeah, this is Randi. I appreciate you sharing all of that, to, Riley. Because those are certainly some of the underlining skills that we were hoping to be teaching and reinforcing throughout the weekend as well. Just the transferable, you know, independent living skills, social skills, professionalism, networking. There’s so much of, of what you said that we were, we were hoping would be some of the takeaways. And certainly for students coming in, having some kind of preparation and baseline for that is certainly helpful as well.
Jeff: Riley, just curious, what does your high school schedule, now that school just started, what does that look like?
Riley: So first semester I will be taking college public speaking, AP literature, band, choir, college algebra, college American government, and then study hall, which is my first semester. And then second semester, I am doing AP literature, band, choir, personal finance, which is a high school class college algebra. And then right now I’m trying to debate between a study hall or to my seventh hour, because I’ve already have a study hall my first hours.
Sophia: I’m in my junior year, I have taken about 70 credits out of 120, so I should be done by the end of next year. And I also took classes in high school my senior year, I took some college classes because I could transfer the credits to the college I’m at now so that I didn’t have to take the like pre-req classes. I could just take classes towards my major.
Jeff: Sophia. I know state services for the blind through Randi and tou for Career Exploration Services. I was wondering if your college offered that service as well.
Sophia: I know that our college has like some services, but they really don’t like mention it until the end of your junior year, towards your senior year when you need to do internships and field experience. But I know that it’s not talked about a lot.
Riley: Our school does not have a lot, but we do have a class called co-op where you can go and work for whatever business you are going to work for. Unfortunately, I can’t do that just because of transportation reasons, but they don’t usually have that. And I and just our school is so small where you don’t have a lot of that. A lot of the opportunities that I’ve had either come through Randi or come through my vision teacher. Also, my dad’s work did have me over for a job shadowing earlier this summer in July.
Jeff: I think it’s really great that you both took advantage of this opportunity put forward by State Services for the Blind and what you learned from it, not only the career exploration and the experience of talking to people who are in careers and asking questions, but you also get those life skills, those social skills, everything that comes with it. There’s so many events that I’ve have been able to attend doing the podcast, seeing all these opportunities. It’s just so great to explore whether it’s canoeing, camping, college 101s, career exploration, I think it’s really great. And wow, the summer is winding down, Randi.
Randi: Yeah. Unfortunately for those that are trying to hold on to every, every last little sliver of summer, we are winding down. I’ve got students that are already in school, students that are returning next week. So yeah.
Sophia: I have already had three quizzes in an assignment due.
Randi: Exactly. So for people like myself that love the fall, this transitionary time is, is wonderful. But yeah, gosh, summers just go so fast. We try to, we try to fill them with lots of opportunities for students. But certainly looking ahead to the school year, lots of opportunities to get connected with various things sponsored through SSB and some of our partners throughout the academic year as well.
Jeff: I think it’s really neat that you went to Brainerd with this event, listen to the feedback and brought it to the people. How do you feel about that, Sophia?
Sophia: I liked that it was in a different location, because I have done some of the other SSB events that have been in the Metro. I mean, it was a long ways from where I’m at, But it was really good to see other parts of the state that I haven’t been to, or maybe only once, but I liked it because it just was good to do something else.
Riley: I think it was nice for me coming up to Brainerd, because I live about two hours northwest of the Twin Cities, and from where I live, it’s not worth it sometimes to go to those events, because it literally almost adds up to eight hours of driving for my parents. And I don’t like that as a person, that it was always like, my mom’s a teacher. So I have that like courteous side of me where I don’t want people driving eight hours to come take me to and back from certain events. And just with my schedule, I’m, I’m busy. I’m a solo performer with piano and vocals. It’s hard because it’s like I could have a gig at the same time as a event for SSB. Also, during the year, I’m a high school wrestler and also a track athlete, so that gets tough too, especially with some of those things. And then I’d have to take a day off of school, and my parents would have to take a day off of work to go take me to these events. So I’m glad that we were able to put it up in Brainerd, because Brainerd is only an hour and 45 from my house, so it was a lot easier to do than try to go and go all the way to the Twin Cities.
Jeff: Well, that’s great news. And as I heard from Randi, they’re already planning for next year.
Randi: That’s the plan. We’re already having a discussion about what that should look like and how it will take form. So stay tuned. I think we’re going to plan for that first weekend in August again. So more details will be forthcoming. And we’re hoping to make it even better event than this year.
Jeff: So I really appreciate Sophia and Riley for coming on to Blind Abilities. Sophia, any last words?
Sophia: I don’t have any. I think it was really good.
Riley: I think for me, I appreciate Randi’s outgoing for everyone for hosting this event. It’s not every year that you get to single handedly almost basically put this thing on and obviously with Mr. DeSantis and company down at SSB obviously would not have been possible. But I’d like to recommend, you know, if anybody’s out there listening that has, you know, a visually impaired kid that’s, I would say, honestly, a junior in high school or above that’s kind of looking to this career exploration thing. You should really sign up for this camp because it’s going to help you a lot with your maturity. You know, obviously sophomores in high school obviously welcome, but you need to make sure that they’re able to function at a high level and also pay attention, because what I see sometimes is a lot of people, they don’t necessarily know how to live on their own because either they’ve always been with their parents and stuff like that, or when they’ve been at their grandparents or families. So I’d encourage those kids to go to your friend’s house. That’s a sighted peer, build some trust, start learning how to kind of survive on your own in a controlled environment where you know, you still have help at your disposal. So that’s the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone. And also, you know, push your kids, but obviously don’t push them past the breaking point, but get them into stuff. Don’t pretend that they’re unable to do anything because that’s really what kills motivation a lot.
Jeff: That’s some really good points. Really good. Well, Sophia, Riley, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your experience with the event and your experience with your college and high school journeys and your advice. Good stuff.
Riley: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Sophia: Yeah. Thank you.
Randi: Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you sharing your candid feedback, and I’m really glad you could both be a part of our weekend. It was a lot of fun.
Riley: All right. Sweet.
Sophia: Yes.
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Jeff: Be sure to check out the next episode where we bring you the entire audio from the Career Panel Event, where you can learn from five panelists about their journey, their career, their college career, and how they got to where they are today.
Be sure to check out and subscribe to the Spectacle newsletter and learn about all the upcoming events and opportunities, and be sure to check out the numerous podcasts on the news for teens page, and you’ll find the links right in the show notes.
To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact Shane.DeSantis@State.Mn.us
That’s Shane dot d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s at state.mn .us.
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Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc Rehab and find out what they can do for you.
Live. work. Read. Succeed.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.