Commencement Speech

The best decision I made in high school was to sign up for building construction at LRTC. After highschool I plan on working construction. I learned a lot of useful things there that will help me with my future like how to build stairs, how to layout and build walls with door or window openings, and much more. I would highly recommend LRTC to any high school student. I hated school my whole life but I enjoyed my building construction class a lot. I learned more math in that class than I did in my 4 years of high school because we take the math we learn and we use it all the time. In school you just memorize it long enough to take the test then you forget. I learned how to estimate material for a job like how many yards of concrete you will need to pore a foundation or how many boxes of shingles you will need to shingle a roof. That’s just the easy stuff I also learned how to calculate rafter lengths with different slopes and overhangs. These things were made easy because we are there for most of the day and we get a lot of time to practice this with hands-on work. I learned how to use a lot of different tools safety like the table saw, the compound miter saw, Circular saw, and different kinds of nailers. I think everyone should have some experience with in construction because you will need to do work around the house at some point, and you can save a lot of money if you know how to do it yourself.

A lot of kids don’t take LRTC because they don’t want to have to take more classes as a senior or they want more room in their schedule, but in the end it’s worth it. If you are in a trade you get the opportunity to earn your OSHA 10 card which is required to even be on most job sites. Getting that in high school puts you one step ahead of other people who graduate with you that might be looking for a job. It is also a fun and easy way to get credits if you need them. My junior and senior year went by much quicker than my freshman a sophomore year because every other day I actually had something to look forward to like building the shed we built junior year or that picnic table my friend and I built last week. At the beginning of senior year we were building a shed in Lewiston, so we would load up all the tools and go first thing in the morning and it was a lot of fun.

If you want your junior and senior year to go by fast or you want to learn some useful stuff for once sign up for LRTC it will be worth it. The skills that I learned in LRTC are valuable. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to start working toward a career while still in high school. I think high school in general should be more focused on the students career after high school. Since high school is not like that I found a way to learn a trade while being in school and it will help me a lot in my future.

Photo by wolf4max on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND