SAN MARCOS - A career shouldn't be just something that pays the bills, it should be one's passion, professional musician David Maldonado said at a conference Saturday for Latino boys at Palomar College.

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Speaking to 16 students from North County middle and high schools, the flamenco and classical guitarist urged the teens to find "something that burns inside of you, that you love to do" and figure out a way to build a career around that. He was speaking at the fourth annual Encuentros Education & Career Exploration Conference.

"If you like to play video games, maybe you could design a video game," said Maldonado, 35, of Rancho Penasquitos. "If you like eating, you could be a chef."

That, said Maldonado, is essentially what he did.

"When I told people I wanted to be a guitar player, people said, 'That's cool. But what are you really going to do?' " he said.

Maldonado said what he really did was sharpen his skills, promote his music and work as a salesman at Qualcomm until he started earning enough money to make a living exclusively from playing the guitar.

"I'm living proof," he said. "You can be successful doing your passion."

Maldonado was one of about 40 conference presenters from a broad cross-section of professions. Artists, scientists, lawyers, auto mechanics, computer programmers, college professors, a nurse, a sheriff's deputy and others taught workshops in small Palomar College classrooms on a wide variety of topics related to careers and college. Students selected individual classes to attend during back-to-back, 45-minute sessions based on their personal interests.

The classes followed an opening session at the Dome sport center on campus.

In that session, Maldonado and his Maldonado Trio performed an as-yet-untitled number that encourages youths to dream big. At the end of the day, conference participants were asked to suggest titles.

Also during the opening session, a Palomar College official, a professor, a television reporter and the president of the group putting on the event took turns admonishing participants to stay in school.

"We could have perhaps the next governor of California here. … The possibilities are endless," said Mark Evilsizer, president of the Encuentros Leadership of North County San Diego and chairman of the Palomar College governing board. "But what does it require? It requires you first to stay in school. It requires you to work hard."

Evilsizer said in an interview later that a record 600 boys attended the conference, shattering the 500 mark of one year ago. The program was launched in 2003 when North County community leaders, alarmed by high dropout rates for area Latino boys, sought to help teens see the value of graduating.

During his class, Maldonado underscored the importance of staying in school.

"If you don't finish school, then you'll have your job at 7-Eleven," he said.

Seventeen-year-old Martin DeLaCruz was one of the 16 students who attended Maldonado's class.

DeLaCruz is a senior at Carlsbad High School who likes to play the electric guitar. He said the message inspired him to pursue his own dream of becoming a professional musician.

"I had been thinking that I would just be a high school English teacher," DeLaCruz said. "But after listening to him, I am going to try to become a guitar player. I actually think I can do it."

How one thinks was the focus of one outside-the-box class taught by Sally Foster, a former psychology professor at MiraCosta College. The title was, "Your Brain and What It's Doing."

Foster brought along a prop for the lesson. And it wasn't a plastic copy of one of the body's most crucial organs; it was the real deal.

"I'm going to show you a brain today," Foster said, as young eyes grew wide and a hush fell over the classroom. "I'm going to take it out of the liquid it's preserved in."

Using blue rubber gloves, she then pulled out of a jar a brain that she said had belonged to a 92-year-old woman who donated her body to the UC San Diego School of Medicine about two decades ago. Foster walked around the room and gave each boy a chance to touch it.

"I thought it was going to feel squishy at first," said Antonio Lopez, 11, who attends Rancho Minerva Middle School in Vista. "But it wasn't. It was all hard."

However, the students left knowing their own brains could get soft if they don't exercise them.

"It's like a muscle," Foster said. "If you don't use it, you …" She paused for a moment.

"Lose it," the boys said in unison, finishing the sentence.

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.