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Melaina Kroft is a student at Nebraska Methodist College in Omaha pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She’s known since she was very young that she wanted to work in the health care industry. When she took classes in the Southeast Nebraska Career Academy Partnership (SENCAP) program, nursing caught her attention.

“SENCAP helped me weed through all of the different aspects of health care until I knew I wanted to work with patients, either as a doctor or a nurse,” she said. “I would like to work in the emergency room, and I may continue on in my education to get my masters (degree), but that is still to be determined.”

The Seward native first joined SENCAP to take some prerequisite classes while still at Seward High School, but it also forced her to look ahead. While most high school students are focused on friends and extracurricular activities, she was able to focus on “big-kid” issues she hadn’t thought of before.

“It prepared me for things such as making a resume, perfecting job interviews, finding out what my strengths and weaknesses were, and how I could apply this to not only my college career, but to my career after college as well,” she added.

She also learned about time-management skills since she was taking both high school and college classes at the same time. Kroft said this proved to be especially useful while in college. While most students were struggling with the demands of higher education, she was used to it.

“Other people should consider SENCAP because it does a great job of preparing students for college, real-life skills like job interviews and resumes, teaches each student to understand themselves and how they work, and provides the opportunity to get ahead in school,” she said.

Kroft knew that participating in SENCAP would pay off in the long run, and her future is headed in the right direction as she heads into her junior year at NMC.