PARSIPPANY — Many high school students find themselves adrift by the time they exit their thirteenth year of mandated education. School can prepare you for a multitude of things—cramming the stages of DNA replication for some, or learning how to show up punctually enough times to avoid detention for others—but there is one experience that school fundamentally cannot prepare its students for: life without it.
It’s no secret that many students struggle with adjusting to their new post-graduate lifestyles. Leaving high school for a specialized career path, especially after orienting one’s entire life around strict bell schedules and stable online gradebooks, is hard. Bridging that transformative gap may be arguably harder. Still, for the past four years, high schools on both sides of Parsippany have been taking a different approach to prepare their students for life after graduation.
During the last five or six weeks of high school, seniors at Parsippany Hills High School and Parsippany High School have the opportunity to opt out of the standard education curriculum following the completion of their AP exams, instead participating in a regulated student internship experience under the guidance of an assigned local mentor. Internships may follow an on-site, hybrid, or virtual model, depending on the mentor’s availability and schedule, and require students to complete at least 80 to 90 hours of work experience over five to six weeks to remain in the program.
The alternative provides an engaging and refreshing opportunity for students seeking interactive work experience. Seniors can assess whether the career path they hope to pursue holds substantial value for them and gain insight into the working lives they may soon lead in a few years. As the internship program operates on a first-come, first-served basis, all students who meet the attendance and disciplinary requirements are eligible to secure a spot, provided they are quick enough to find a mentor willing to take them under their wing.
This spring, the internship program has been more popular than ever, filling an unprecedented maximum of over one hundred spots across both high schools in Parsippany. The program, which was initially experimental and only open to a small group of students when it launched, has since grown exponentially, with word spreading swiftly through the grapevine among both students and local businesses.
This rapid growth has been spearheaded mainly by Parsippany business teachers Chrissy Russell and Elizabeth O’Boyle, both of whom kickstarted the program just one short year after the pandemic shut down thousands of businesses and activities across the state. “When Chrissy Russell and I launched the Senior Internship Program four years ago,” O’Boyle tells the Parsippany Focus, “we envisioned the positive impact it would have on our students’ futures. Thanks to the strong support from the PTHSD administration and the incredible response of local businesses, that vision has become a reality.”
O’Boyle adds that “over two hundred seniors” were mentored this spring in a variety of fields, including business, STEM, the arts, trades, education, and more.” These include internships in a variety of settings, ranging from hospitals to law firms, to media agencies, to public schools, and even the Parsippany Focus itself.
Aryan Masaldan, a recent graduate of the Parsippany Hills High School Class of 2025, was one of the over two hundred student interns this spring, and arguably, the intern with the furthest drive to work to and from. For his last five weekdays of school, Masaldan spent his time at the intersection of prosthetics and paw prints—3D Pets, a prosthetic device manufacturer for disabled animals based in Bloomingdale.
Masaldan, like many of the senior interns this spring, feels satisfied with his experience: “I’ve had such an incredible time, and I feel like I was able to get some real working experience to support my career goals,” Masaldan tells the Focus.
An incoming biomedical engineering student at Johns Hopkins University, Masaldan has found that “interning under 3D Pets has prepared [him] well for university and beyond,” and he feels “grateful to have had the experience and make a difference in the lives of some cute animals” as well.
Students from the other side of town also confirmed this sentiment.
Nikoloz Inashvili, a recent graduate of the Parsippany High School Class of 2025, found similar fulfillment in his internship experience. “The senior internship program allowed me to experience the career I aspire to have, truly,” Inashvili expresses. Inashvili, who will be attending Princeton University in the fall, says, “I was able to confirm my love for the law field, and I feel more confident about pursuing my studies in a subject area I was once uncertain about. I got to experience firsthand what it’s like to work in a law office, which is something other high school students—and some college students—don’t even have the chance to do.”
It’s no surprise, then, that many students, including Inashvili and Masaldan, have echoed the internship’s help in guiding and confirming their prospective career choices. Even students who didn’t have the opportunity to attend their internships physically, such as Parsippany Hills High School graduate Alison Cai, took something meaningful away from the experience. “Although I had a virtual internship where I was not required to be on the site of my organization, my mentor was great at communication and scheduled weekly check-ups where we could reflect on my experience,” Cai reflects. Throughout her internship—half of which she was required to do in the school library—she was forced to learn “how to not feel out of place despite being in a Zoom call with many experts,” including marketing professionals and even a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate. “Overall, I learned many skills applicable to both college and later in the future, ranging from setting my schedules to finding deadlines to follow,” Cai concludes. “At the end of the day, it was super fun and informative!”
Moving forward, senior internship directors Chrissy Russell and Elizabeth O’Boyle hope to pilot a full-year senior internship program as early as the next school year, allowing students to pursue their desired career paths while navigating their pivotal final year of high school. As the outgoing senior class prepares to embark on a new journey and the incoming senior class prepares to conclude an old one, Russell reflects on how the program has evolved since its inception in 2021. “It’s been truly inspiring to witness just how much the Senior Internship Program has positively affected so many of our Parsippany students,” Russell says. “As we look ahead, we’re excited to continue building and expanding the program, so even more Parsippany seniors can take advantage of these incredible, real-world learning opportunities. Our goal is to make this experience accessible to as many students as possible,” Russell proclaims, “and we’re confident that with continued community support—we can do just that.”
Parsippany Focus Intern, Raymond Trunk, the author of this article, also wanted to reflect on his own experience. The senior internship program, which officially concluded a little under a month ago, has been incredibly impactful and enriching for tons of my classmates—myself very much included. Without the vision of Mrs. Chrissy Russell and Mrs. Elizabeth O’Boyle and the support of the Board of Education, I wouldn’t have had the platform to write articles for the Parsippany Focus to begin with, let alone experience various community events and conduct interviews with a broad range of local leaders under the guidance of the Parsippany Focus’s editor-in-chief, Frank Cahill. I am incredibly grateful to anyone who has contributed their time and effort to bettering my articles, and I am thrilled to continue writing articles for the Parsippany Focus during the summer and beyond. Thank you so much for reading!
