When John Krumboltz was a boy, he saw his father reviewing papers for a case and thought, "This lawyer stuff is really boring." On that flimsy evidence he dismissed the idea of going into law.
Today, as a professor of education and psychology, Krumboltz wants to help others make more informed career decisions. His idea is to make a series of videos that let high school students come closer to experiencing a job. For the prototype, Krumboltz set out to simulate the life of an ad executive. After consulting with advertising types, he wrote a script, hired actors and teamed up with a Palo Alto producer to film an interactive video. In it, the user speeds through a workday in one hour -- sitting through meetings with a hard-driving boss, surveying customers and planning ad buys.
Brooks/Cole Publishing Co. underwrote the $120,000 cost of producing the video, which is on CD-ROM, but felt it was too costly to distribute the first one or make more. Now Krumboltz is applying for grants and trying to raise money to produce new versions for other fields. He hopes someone eventually will market a line of these CD-ROMs to high schools nationwide.
"I wish I had something like this when I was a kid," Krumboltz says. Maybe he would have ended up a lawyer after all.
