I have always felt the need to be doing something. School has always been a challenge with the sitting still. I want to work with my hands and feel rewarded with seeing the results. My high school offered dual credit with a local college that offers welding for up to two years. I signed up and have taken two years of welding to obtain a certificate upon graduation. It has been one of the greatest things for me during my high school years. I have worked to buy some tools and equipment to be able to practice outside of school. I spent a lot of my time working on getting better and building things. I like to do projects that include repair and fabrication. I started working with metal in 4H by participating in the blacksmithing program. I enjoyed it enough to get my own forge and do it at home. I am able to offer assistance to my program instructor in working with the less experienced kids when we meet to work on our fair projects. I also volunteer at local festivals and demonstrate my skills. I think these festivals give kids a chance to learn about skills that are not as prevalent in society today. I have learned a lot of things working with metal. The main thing is that sometimes it may take multiple tries to get something to work for you. If you continue to work at it you will get there. It’s not easy and you need patience and tenacity and maybe a little artistry. Welding came as a natural progression from blacksmithing as I had found a love for hot metal and making it work in ways that come from my imagination. As I mentioned before I want to weld as a career and I see myself owning a mobile welding business. I want to be able to travel to job sites and work wherever it takes me. I want to learn as much as I can and also teach others what I know. Trades are a very important career option that I feel are not as offered in school as they should be. We need more options other than traditional college for high schoolers to consider as a path after graduation. It gets harder and harder to kind skilled labor or contractors locally. If people are willing to work trades can be a great career. Welding is my passion and I am going to pursue it.

I am a high school senior. I have had the opportunity to take dual credit classes for welding at a local community college. I will have two years of experience in welding with stick, mig, and tig upon graduating. I wish to further my education and experience at a welding trade school and have financial need. I started welding before I was able to take classes during my junior and senior years in high school. I had asked to learn from a family friend. My parents bought me a basic welder when I was 14 years old. I have worked for my family owned business since I was able to carry and run a chainsaw. I have a few years of work experience. We had a need for someone to be able to weld on heavy equipment and I wanted to learn. My family business has taught me to not be afraid of hard work. We work when we need to and are not a nine to five, Monday to Friday family. I have learned that our business takes pride in being fair, honest, and hard working. I participate in local 4h club and learned blacksmithing before I learned to weld. I liked it so much I bought a forge and tools to do it myself at home. I became skilled enough to be able to help with teaching the other kids in the class. I can see myself being a volunteer instructor for the 4h program. I feel like blacksmithing helped spur the love of working with metal. I enjoy helping others learn. I volunteer to demonstrate blacksmithing at local festivals. I believe the trades are dwindling and there is a great need to promote them in the community. My favorite things to make are knives. I have made some and donated them to local wildlife conservation chapters for their fundraising efforts. My free time usually consists of working on my welding. I like to practice the welds I will turn in at class. I also like to fabricate. I have made several things for our family business and a welding table for myself. My dad asked for a scraper for our skid steer to use on our log yard or in the woods. He gave me his idea and I created the piece from his description. I have also made an implement for a tractor to install in ground fence for pets. I visualized and fabricated the part. I want to attend a welding trade school for pipe welding and aerospace welding. I plan to attend the job fairs that the school has to better get an idea of what the jobs require. The school has a broad range of experienced instructors to share their knowledge and job experiences with the students. It gives us the perspective of seasoned work force to better navigate the broad area of welding professions. My ultimate goal is to own a mobile welding business. I want to have the ability to travel anywhere with my job. Welding is a trade that can take me anywhere I want to go.

I am a high school senior. I have had the opportunity to take dual credit classes for welding at a local community college. I will have two years of experience in welding with stick, mig, and tig upon graduating. I wish to further my education and experience at a welding trade school and have financial need. I started welding before I was able to take classes during my junior and senior years in high school. I had asked to learn from a family friend. My parents bought me a basic welder when I was 14 years old. I have worked for my family owned business since I was able to carry and run a chainsaw. We had a need for someone to be able to weld on heavy equipment and I wanted to learn. I participate in local 4h club and learned blacksmithing before I learned to weld. I liked it so much I bought a forge and tools to do it myself at home. I became skilled enough to be able to help with teaching the other kids in the class. I can see myself being a volunteer instructor for the 4h program. I feel like blacksmithing helped spur the love of working with metal. I enjoy helping others learn. I volunteer to demonstrate blacksmithing at local festivals. I believe the trades are dwindling and there is a great need to promote them in the community. My favorite things to make are knives. I have made some and donated them to local wildlife conservation chapters for their fundraising efforts. My free time usually consists of working on my welding. I like to practice the welds I will turn in at class. I also like to fabricate. I have made several things for our family business and a welding table for myself. My dad asked for a scraper for our skid steer to use on our log yard or in the woods. He gave me his idea and I created the piece from his description. I have also made an implement for a tractor to install in ground fence for pets. I visualized and fabricated the part. I want to attend a welding trade school for pipe welding and aerospace welding. I plan to attend the job fairs that the school has to better get an idea of what the jobs require. The school has a broad range of experienced instructors to share their knowledge and job experiences with the students. It gives us the perspective of seasoned work force to better navigate the broad area of welding professions. My ultimate goal is to own a mobile welding business. I want to have the ability to travel anywhere with my job. Welding is a trade that can take me anywhere I want to go.

I am planning on furthering my education at a welding trade school. I have loved to weld since I first burned a rod. I asked a friend to show me how to weld at when I was 14. This friend is a farmer by trade but attended college for welding. He gave me a little instruction and I fell in love with welding. I have been involved in local 4h for blacksmithing since I was 12. That involvement and the love of the projects led me to want to learn to weld. I love to work with hot metal. It was a natural progression from blacksmithing to welding. I have attended dual credit college classes during my junior and senior years of high school. I attend welding classes at the local community college for half of my school day. I want to further continue my education at a trade school. I feel like it will give me more opportunities in many areas of welding careers. I plan to take the pathway of downhill pipe welding and also aerospace welding classes. My intention is to gain more welding knowledge and experience to be employable in this field. In my free time I spend a lot of time at my shop. We have a pole barn that I use as my shop. I have worked to buy blacksmith equipment and welding equipment and tools. I practice for my welding classes there. I want to turn in welds for the highest grade I can. I also have a hobby of knife making which stems from the forging in 4h. I have donated knives for wild life conservation banquet fundraising. I am an outdoorsman that will be most comfortable working in a trade. I love to fabricate. I have made an implement for a skid steer. I made my own design based off of description my dad gave me. I have also made an implement for a tractor for putting underground dog fence wire in. I designed and built my welding table myself. I ultimately want to own a mobile welding business. I want the ability to travel and work. I have worked with my family owned business since I was able to carry and run a chainsaw and tall enough to reach the pedals of a loader. I know how to work hard to get what I want from life and what it takes to support a family.

My chosen career path is welding. I learned to weld on my own out of necessity a few years back around the age of 14. I had always wanted to weld and asked people to show me. A friend showed me a little. My parents bought my brother and I a welder for Christmas. He wasn’t really interested but I sure was. I have attended college dual credit during my junior and senior year of high school. I go to a local community college and have learned stick, mig, and tig welding. I will continue my education at Hobart Institute of Welding in Troy Ohio. I am planning on the pathway for downhill pipe welding and add some aerospace classes. I love to weld. I spend a lot of my free time welding and practicing for my classes. I miss being at my shop welding if I’ve gone a few days. I look forward to projects to do involving welding. I have made some attachments for our family business. We have a skid steer that needed something to clear work areas such as logging jobs. I have made myself a welding table. I have made an implement for a tractor to use to install underground fence wire. I brought these projects to life from ideas of what function we need them to have and I made them. I like to make things. I have not had fabricating or plan reading courses. I will have both of those at Hobart when I attend. I am planning to be take the classes at Hobart and get a feel for what it’s like to be in different welding careers and decide the best path from there. They have career fairs and bring in people that give me insight on what is involved in their industry. Hobart also has employees from many fields and can give advice and insight based on their experience. My ultimate goal is to have a mobile welding business. I want to pursue a career that lets me do something I love to do and get paid to do it. I feel that gives people longevity in their areas of expertise and avoids burn out. I have worked since I was able to carry a chainsaw and run it and tall enough to reach the pedals on a loader. My family is self employed and we work together and when there is work to do. We are not a nine to five Monday through Friday family. I have my own tools. I buy tools for my shop. I am 17 and a senior with two years of college welding. I have job offers here locally. I want to get better educated to open more avenues of employment up for myself. Success for me is doing what I love. I simply love to weld. I started working with metal in 4h blacksmithing. I feel like that gave me a stronger desire to work with metal as a career. I still blacksmith and have bought myself tools for that hobby. I make knives. I have made and donated knives for wild life conservation banquet fundraisers. Metal is my passion.

I will be pursuing welding. I started from necessity because our family business runs heavy equipment and if you run heavy equipment you know things break and need repaired. I followed my dream of welding through some college classes offered as dual credit through a program at my high school. I have learned some basic welding and can weld with stick, mig, and tig. I plan to further my education at a trade school and want to enter pipe welding and aerospace welding classes. I have made a couple of attachments for our skid steer. I came up with the idea and build these custom for our needs. I made them from the idea and picture I had in my brain of what it should look like. I didn’t have blue prints. I coordinated with my dad on what he wanted the items to do, how they functioned, and the ideas he had on how to build them to his satisfaction. As I worked on them I would have to change things and adapt my idea and design and implement the changes. The great thing about welding is if something is broken or wrong you can fix it. I am currently working on an old school bus. It needs some rusty areas replaced. We are making it into an RV of sorts. We want to be able to take it hunting or to games and tailgate from it. I have researched a few schools and decided on one that another school mate has completed. He had nothing but great things to say about it. I toured that particular school and another and liked the one I chose better. I have spoken to several welders that have suggested routes to take to achieve my goals. One thing everyone has said is the local union is a great place to start. I believe the trades are a shrinking industry. It is very hard to find qualified people to do many things in my area. We rely on the local Amish for many things as they seem to have a crew for any trade you need here. I have had informal interviews with several people and have standing job offers locally or at least in my state. I would like to travel possibly and learn as much as I can through employment. I ultimately want to have a mobile welding business. If you were to call someone that knows me well they would most likely tell you that I love to weld and work very hard in anything I do. I am not afraid of physical work and am not afraid to get dirty. I work when the work is there and I put in the time. I take my education in this field seriously and do very well in the classes I have taken so far. I spend extra time outside of the classed perfecting my craft. I have a shop in our pole barn. I have asked for welders and welding equipment for the last several years at Christmas. I work to buy tools for my shop. When I am not working I spend most of my free time there working on things and practicing for class. My friends come to hang out there with me. I will show them how to weld if they want to learn. I have found that most people I talk to that are welders will help in any way they can for someone wanting to learn. I share my knowledge as well. I also blacksmith. I learned that at 4h and loved it so much I also have my own forging equipment. I have l participated in that for several years. My instructor/mentor has asked for my assistance with some of the younger kids. I usually complete my project very early in the meeting sessions and have free time to help instruct. I have attended local fairs and demonstrated with other local blacksmiths. love to make knives and have been commissioned to make some for a national conservation organization to use as fundraising for their local chapter. I learned to blacksmith before I learned to weld and I feel like it led me to welding.

I am pursuing welding, specifically pipe fitting and aerospace. I will enroll in pipe fitting and take additional aerospace courses as an add on. I love to weld. I learned from necessity. I attend local community college classes for welding. I earn dual credit by taking classes at a local community college while attending high school. I love to create things that are purposeful. I think about welding when I am not welding. I like to practice at my shop. I use my time out of school to improve on the skills I’m learning in class. I have worked to buy the tools and welders in my shop. I use a pole barn on our property as my shop as I call it. I work for our family business that involves using heavy equipment. I’ve worked since I was tall enough to reach the pedals. I have repaired the equipment and made attachments for some. One of my larger jobs was to come up with a design for an attachment for a skid steer and fabricate it. I want to go to a trade school and learn more with formal education on these things. Being able to read plans and having the skills needed to bring the plans to life is a very needed ability in many different career fields. My plan is to attend a trade school and then be employed in the welding industry and gain knowledge and experience and eventually have a mobile welding business. I suffer from ADHD and I struggle to maintain focus in things that do not hold my interest. I do not struggle with loss of interest when I weld. I want to weld and I practice in my free time. I have known for a long time that a trade profession would be right for me. I tend to rush through things and with welding I am able to focus and take my time to get better. It never gets old. I have welded for three years. My high school gpa suffered from my struggle with ADHD and welding classes have greatly increased my overall gpa. I get great grades and strive to be in top of my class in welding courses. I don’t let ADHD keep me from doing things, it just makes me take different paths than some people without ADHD. I have no doubt that I will obtain my goals and pursue greatness in this industry.