Learning Turned Into A Career

One of my goals in life is to not buy a house but to build my house. This has been one of my goals for a couple of years now. It all started when I was applying for LRTC. I didn’t know what class I wanted to get into. I just wanted to get into something there. I took all the woodworking classes that were offered to me at Oak Hill so I thought maybe I could apply for the Carpentry class and that I did. I got into the class and once I started to make friends and actually build stuff, it clicked that this is what I wanted to do with my life. When I was younger, my mom was always building stuff in the summer like dog houses. She even built my brother, and I a two story clubhouse that still stands today. The first project that we had to build was a sawhorse and we also had a couple other projects that we built like a fishing pole rack or a table. Those were also fun to make because they were small projects, but when my teacher told me what we were going to start building, that’s when I got really interested in the class.

We were going to start building a shed that people were actually going to buy. It took us about eight months to build this shed and it was only five of us working on it. Eight months does seem like a long time, but we only worked on them every other day for 3 hours each day. Every single day I went into that class all I wanted to do was work, work, work. I loved going in there and seeing all my friends and fooling around with each other but also putting out quality work while doing so. I also have an amazing teacher that looks out for all of our best interest. He set me in the right direction for college and even when I graduate college. This helps me a lot because I feel comfortable going up and asking for help while before I was too shy. My first year in LRTC, I loved it. Only a few kids in my class actually loved to go there everyday and I was one of them. There was a week when I didn’t even have to go into class because my school didn’t have school but I still went in everyday. Whenever Oak Hill doesn’t have school but Lewiston does I technically don’t have to go. I like the class and my friends in there don’t realize why I even go in when I don’t have school. Whenever their school has anything like early releases or late starts they don’t even come in. I don’t think I have ever missed a class in LRTC. Even if I don’t feel good I still go to that class because I love to learn about that stuff.

I always heard my mom tell my brother that if you like what you do for a job then it doesn’t feel like you are working. You are just doing what you like to do, and that’s what I think that this quote is trying to get across “Education is not the filling of a pail, but rather the lighting of a fire”(Yeats). So your education is not only about learning just to get all of this information you need, it’s about learning what you want to learn to get information that will help you later on in life. My second year of LRTC is what really makes me want to go to school. Everyday I go into that class I want to keep learning because it’s something that I want to do with my life. In about a month we are going to start building a garage on a cemetery in Lewiston. I am super excited. This gives me so many opportunities to learn new things so I love learning about it. When I’m in that class it doesn’t even feel like I’m learning like in any other class. I also like how you get a finished product once you are done with whatever you are building. You have something you can hold or proof of what you have done. I love seeing how the final product comes out.

My LRTC class is the one class I will never forget because I have learned so much stuff in that class that I will use for the rest of my life. I never want to stop learning which really shows that I have a real passion about this career. I’m always so interested in everything I learn and ask questions to make sure I understand.  I don’t usually do this in any other class which shows I really have a fire burning for carpentry.

Photo by Wilson Hui on Foter.com / CC BY