The latter consisted of 10 Los Gatos High School students who spent a few hours with town staff members, finding out what daily life is like in their shoes.

That morning, Assistant Town Manager Pamela Jacobs and Mayor Mike Wasserman welcomed the participants to the civic center building just up the street from the high school. She introduced heads and managers of several town departments, explaining that together they are responsible for most of the day-to-day operations of things that happen in town.

"Your town government touches your life, probably in ways that you don't realize," Jacobs said.

Though the town had prepared for 16 to participate, students only received a few days' notice of the event. The 10 students who took part were distributed between various departments. Students split up between the clerk's and town manager's office, community development, community services, finance, police and parks and public works departments and the library. Each department had one "shadow," except for the police department, which had three.

Kayla Palmer learned the ropes of public records with Clerk Administrator MarLynn Rasmussen.

"Read that title," Rasmussen told Palmer as she showed her an item from a past town council agenda. "Isn't that exciting?"

The item—a proposed resolution to order the abatement of hazardous vegetation—was only one in a thick agenda packet.

"That would be your weekend reading," Rasmussen said.

"It's a lot of paperwork to read," Palmer said. "But some of my history reading ... "

Palmer said later that, though she is already interested in a marketing or advertising career, she would definitely take another job-shadow opportunity if it arose. She said it was a much more effective way to explore job opportunities than most other school activities.

"I don't really think that a lot of the projects in high school apply to people skills," she said.

Los Gatos High School Principal Trudy McCulloch said it can be difficult for students to set their sights on career goals when they are still in school, especially with so many new opportunities available to them.

"When I was growing up, it was assumed that you'd go to school and get some kind of training and then go to your career, which would be it for the rest of your life," she said. "Now they're saying students might have two or three or four different careers in their life ... Some of the careers that they will have don't even exist right now."

Parks and Public Works Department Director John Curtis said he had an opportunity to participate in a similar activity when he was younger and felt this one was a way to repay that opportunity.

"I think it gives [students] an overview of the different aspects of working life," Curtis said. "When they're planning their future it's good to see what's out there."

Senior Teresa Weygandt spent time with different employees of Curtis' department, learning about traffic signals, site inspections, and town signage.

Prior to the event, she had been working with a leadership class project that involved a seatbelt-buckling awareness campaign. Since the town has its own sign shop, Weygandt made a prototype sign bearing the slogan, "Click it or ticket."

Though she has already been accepted to a college aeronautics program, Weygandt said she enjoyed the opportunity to see how things are done in town.

"I'm not interested in that at all [but] it was all pretty exciting," she said. "It's interesting to hear what goes on in the town where you live."