VALDOSTA — Wiregrass Georgia Technical College hosted its annual Geekfest Tuesday. There were over 1,500 students from 17 different area schools in attendance.

Geekfest gives students the opportunity to explore careers and programs with hands-on activities that prompt questions and conversations to help them in career exploration.

“We host Geekfest so students [can] come out and explore our programs, more than just a campus tour, but actually do activities in each program,” said Executive Director of High School Services Brooke Jaramillo.

High school students were able to learn about the various programs and careers offered through activities led by Wiregrass students. Some of the offered activities were VR Geeks, NetGeeks, Fantasy Hair Extensions, Bone Bingo, Mirror, Mirror…Am I Ambidextrous and many more.

“It’s great to see the Wiregrass students doing activities to interact with the younger prospective students, because I think that’s a really good way to connect prospects to our programs,” said Jaramillo.

Many of the fields explored include high-demand careers where students can find jobs here in South Georgia.

“[Computer Networking] is the future, not even the future, it’s now. It’s not going to get smaller,” said computer networking instructor at Wiregrass, Joey Johnson. “There’s not many businesses today that can work offline completely.”

“If their internet goes down … they have to call people like me in there to make sure those things stay running all the time, and hopefully people like the students who are coming to see us as well,” said Johnson.

Geekfest allows prospective students to interact with potential career paths. If they become interested in a specific program, Jaramillo encourages students to follow up with a campus tour.

“We welcome students to schedule a campus tour so if they see anything that they like today and they wanna learn more about it, they can schedule a time to come back out and visit,” said Jaramillo.