Pathway Explorer Profile: Sheamus O’Connell
Posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016
Sheamus O’Connell has a more hectic schedule than your average Grade 11 student, but he’s got plenty of experience navigating rough waters.
O’Connell is taking a woodworking class at West Carleton Secondary School, which is replaced by Drafting for the Trades two days a week as part of the Team Taught dual credit model offered by the college. As a Team Taught student, O’Connell is able to earn a college credit within his regular high school course load.
That suits O’Connell just right given his extensive extracurricular commitments as a student athlete. He recently returned from France, where he was attending a training camp for whitewater kayaking in preparation for national team trials in May.
He paddles for a local club called the Ottawa River Runners and races for the national organization Canoe Kayak Canada, with the provincial association Whitewater Ontario coordinating his events and funding.
Family friends got O’Connell and his sister into whitewater kayaking at the age of four. While his friends and sister are no longer active in the sport, O’Connell is as committed to it as ever.
“I train every single day,” says O’Connell. “During the summer, I’m not even in Ottawa – I’m always gone.”
That level of commitment means significant time away from West Carleton, requiring extra effort and support from his teachers in order to keep pace with his schoolwork.
“Each semester I miss around a month just for training,” says O’Connell.
The Carp resident is appreciative of how accommodating his college instructor, Ms. Fulford, has been of his busy schedule.
“Ms. Fulford, she’s been amazing,” says O’Connell.
“All my teachers have been so supportive. I haven’t met one teacher that hasn’t supported me. They’ll work with me before I leave during lunch or afterwards — whatever it takes.”
With his deep passion for the sport, O’Connell anticipates the same level of involvement when the time comes to graduate and move onto postsecondary studies. Feedback from fellow kayak athletes on attending college as a competitive athlete has been encouraging.
“A lot of my training partners are right now in university or college, and they’ve found that the profs have always been really supportive,” says O’Connell.
“There’s also things you can do with student athlete status that gives you more breathing room.”
O’Connell has another year left in high school, but he’s already got some idea of what he wants to do in postsecondary and beyond.
“I’m really interested in architecture, and a lot of drafting has to do with architecture,” says O’Connell.
“The drafting is lots of fun. At first it was really tricky to sort of learn and memorize the different tricks, but then it’s sort of like math – once you get the hang of it, it’s like a pattern, and then it’s bam-bam.”
– Sheamus O’Connell, Dual Credit Student
O’Connell recently visited Algonquin’s Woodroffe campus as part of a Team Taught visit for students earning college credits at their high schools. The camp gives participating students from local high schools a sense of campus life to pair with their experience in a college-level course.
“It’s definitely going to help the transition because I’ll be more comfortable knowing what it’s like and knowing how the college teachers approach the problems,” says O’Connell.
“Also knowing how it works if you’re gone – if you miss a day – and how the college teacher will respond to that compared to how high school teachers responded to that.”
O’Connell visited Algonquin’s Perth campus last semester. In combination with his Woodroffe campus visit this Spring, the experience has given him a feel for the options available and what he might prefer.
“We checked out the masonry program in Perth, and even though I was still at Algonquin College that gave off a different vibe than here,” says O’Connell. “It was much smaller, so it seemed more like a high school-type feel than a classic university or college campus.”
“When I graduate high school, I want to be done with all of the high school stuff and I want to move on into a more mature, bigger atmosphere.”
About Academic Partnerships:
Pathway Building since 2006. Academic Partnerships works with a comprehensive network of Pathway Builders (community, educational and government stakeholders) to create and deliver on a variety of experiential opportunities to be a college student through hands-on, curriculum-driven experiences for Pathway Explorers (students in grade 7 – 12). With a commitment to the dream development and pathway finding for students prior to starting full-time studies the team has programming at Algonquin College’s three Ontario Campuses: Ottawa, Pembroke, and Perth. For more information visit: algonquincollege.com/ap
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