For Fairfield Ludlowe seniors, the real world strikes early:

Alex Mollica's idea of a final exam involves singing, dancing, eating and proper spelling. And his teachers agree.

This spring, he'll spend the last four weeks of high school at Bridgeport's Downtown Cabaret, helping produce the biggest show of the year at the theater: The Putnam County 25th Annual Spelling Bee.

For Mollica, an aspiring actor, this culmination to his high school years is far more relevant than, say, scribbling a term paper on King Tut, or computing the cosine of an obtuse angle. Next fall, he'll enroll in acting school. This spring, he'll gain first-hand knowledge backstage.

"I'll get to see what goes on behind all the glitz and glamour," said the 17-year-old, who recently played Bill in the school's production of To Kill a Mockingbird, and who's now rehearsing for the part of Marseilles in The Music Man.

"If you understand how a show works better, you'll do a better job acting," he explained. "I already see the people backstage as valuable, but I think, after working on Spelling Bee, I'll see more clearly all that they do -- instead of just seeing someone as the person who hands me a prop."

Mollica is one of 232 Fairfield Ludlowe High School students who've signed up for the school's senior internship program this year. The internships start in May, sending participants outside the classroom for the final month of school to work 25 to 35 hours a week at a local business or organization of their choice.

This will mark the fourth year for the program -- and its biggest yet -- that began in 2007 with just 34 seniors signing up. Since then, each year has brought a leap in its popularity. With this year's senior class of 358 students, roughly two out of three seniors will participate.

"Last year we hit the tipping point, with more than half of the students taking part," said Frank Tatto, director of guidance at the school. "It's an opportunity to test drive a potential career or a college major, and to network in an area you might be living in coming years."

The swelling numbers have presented the career center with a welcome challenge: As more students sign up, the office has to find more places for them to work, even as many businesses are -- if anything -- downsizing or closing shop.

But the students present cheap (free!), generally reliable labor, which makes them attractive part-time hires for firms, said Alice Gorman, the program's director. Sometimes, the internships have led to summer work. What's more, especially enterprising seniors are seeking out internships on their own, relieving the career center of some work. Mollica is one.

"He's definitely been persistent," said Hugh Hallinan, executive producer of the Downtown Cabaret, who's worked there for 30 years. "It was a bit of the `squeaky wheel gets the grease,' really."

About two weeks ago, Hallinan said, he was preparing for a weekend of concerts at the cabaret when he received a message from the box office desk. Then he got a voice mail. Then two e-mails popped up. All from Mollica. "I don't know if debt collectors are that diligent," he said.

The timing of the internship fit perfectly with the production of Spelling Bee, which will debut on June 11, Hallinan said. In the month before a show starts, a theater company is bustling with activity: art directors are building sets and making costumes; actors are rehearsing. "Alex," Hallinan said, "will have his plate full."

But beyond staying busy, he'll gain insight into the inner workings of a ground-up production, an important lesson for a young actor, Hallinan said.

"Take the example of an actor freaking out because the lights didn't come on during a dress rehearsal, because the actor has no training at all in lighting," he explained. "Some actors don't understand that there's programming involved, that there are computer glitches. Whereas, if they went through an apprenticeship like Alex will go through, there will be more understanding."

"That's also true of the costume glitch, and actors having a diva-fit over a zipper bursting," Hallinan added.

This year's process began for students in December, when flyers went out to homerooms asking them to list their top three choices for work. Their options were myriad. Students last year worked in fields as diverse as urology, education, business, newspapers, religion and zoology.

Rachel Baumann, 18, went straight to Gorman's office to discuss her options. As editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Prospect, she was interested in writing, she said. But she's also been drawn to law for as long as she can remember. She told Gorman that she might like to intern for a judge.

"And Mrs. Gorman said, `Oh my gosh! What about interning with a public defender's office?'" Baumann recalled. The idea resonated. Baumann listed it as her top choice on her application. She listed working with a lawyer as her second choice, and working in Sen. Jim Himes' office as her third choice. She's tentatively lined up with a public defender's office in Norwalk. She'll interview there in the coming weeks.

"That would be perfect," she said. "I really believe everyone has the right to an attorney, no matter who they are. It would be an eye-opening experience, I think, to go to the jail, to be one-on-one with all sorts of people."

During the internship, students work closely with a sponsor at their site and with a mentor teacher at Fairfield Ludlowe, for whom they must keep a running journal chronicling their experiences. The journal, said Maria Benjamin, who interned at the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church last year, was constructive.

"You get to look back and say, `What did today teach me about being a valuable employee?'" she said. "A bunch of people thought it was a pain, but I thought it was valuable, now I have a whole record of transformation I went through with the internship."

The program itself is the brainchild of former Fairfield Ludlowe Headmaster Nancy Larsen, according to Tatto, and it enables students to complete a "capstone experience" that draws from skills they've picked up throughout high school. The career center modeled the program after a similar one at Greenwich High School, which began in 1997. The Greenwich program -- like at Fairfield Ludlowe -- began with just 25 students. This spring, 529 of the 680 seniors there will participate, said Randi Green, college and career counselor at Greenwich High.

The Greenwich students will work in jobs ranging from investment banking to bee keeping. And while most will work in that town, some will travel to California, Colombia, Germany, Egypt and Australia for their work, Green said. A record 149 students there found internships on their own this spring, Green added, something the school has recently promoted.

While the program should give students a better idea of what they want to pursue in coming years -- or, just as valuable, what they don't want to pursue -- it's also billed to employers as a way to glean insight into what their next generation of customers is like.

And it provides a unique window into the mindset of late teenagers. Two years ago, for example, Greenwich High students sought finance internships in droves. That trend ebbed last year, as the students stampeded toward physical therapy and fitness jobs, Green said. This year's hot topic: culinary arts.

Among Fairfield Ludlowe students, a hot topic this year has been high-end fashion. The career center is still looking for internship providers in the financial services and physical therapy.

Of course, entering a program with no clear idea of what you want brings its own rewards, as Matt Tierno, now a freshman at the University of Mary Washington, in Virginia, discovered last spring. For his internship, Tierno secured a spot with the Fairfield Fire Department. He reported most mornings to Station 2 on Jennings Road, where he was issued full gear and treated as a member of the staff. The experience, he said, was eye-opening.

"I thought they just put out fires, but they go to every EMS call that comes in, and that's like 90 percent of what we did," he said. During Tierno's first morning, firefighter Justin Greenhaw presented him with a slideshow on the command structure of the department. Suddenly the bells went off. Someone in town was having a possible heart attack. Greenhaw abandoned the academic work and told Tierno to suit up and hop on the truck.

"It was straight from zero to 100," Greenhaw said. "Just the way the job is."

Over the coming weeks, Tierno learned of the different types of fire and how to fight them, was certified in CPR, and trained with tools such as the Jaws of Life. He also put out fires in the burn building at the department's training center at 1 Rod Highway, and quelled flames there from a hay-laden car set ablaze.

But his favorite part, he said, was just hanging out with the firefighters. "That was the most fun part," he said. "We'd sit down to eat lunch, and then the bells would go off, and off we'd go."

Tierno said the month was a top learning experience in his life. But he grants that it came with an added bonus: by ending in mid-June, it kept his summer plans open.

After graduation, he backpacked through Europe with four friends. After touring Rome, Florence, Amsterdam and Paris, they made their way to Spain. There, he found something even more alarming than fighting fire: fleeing bulls.

"That was the coolest thing I've ever done," he said, of dodging bulls through the narrow streets of Pamplona. Then he paused. "That was the scariest thing I've ever done."