My interest in carpentry started when I was kid. When I was younger, my dad would take me to do some jobs on the weekends. The jobs usually varied from installing toilets, tiling floors, putting up sheetrock, and, easily, the biggest job we’ve done has been making an entire basement an apartment. Due to the fact that I worked with my dad for so long I picked up an interest for the trade.
At the start of my junior year, my guidance counselor, Ms.Terraferma, spoke to us about Co-op Tech. I was immediately interested, and my interest only grew as I found out more of the possible benefits. So when Ms.Terraferma said that it could lead to future job opportunities then I knew I wanted to do it. After looking at some of the trades, I saw a lot that I had interest in, some were things I knew how to do and some were trades that I thought could be useful in the future. My two top options were carpentry and culinary. Eventually, I ended up doing carpentry.
My teacher Mr. Fernandez is probably the best bridge in between real life trade school/ worksite and an actual school teacher. He is the type of person to tell you things exactly and not lie to you. He will correct you and explain everything in great detail so you understand why you do things the way he explained. Beyond this, he tells us real life experiences and situations that will or could happen to us and how to deal with them. Even simple things like saying “yes” instead of “yeah” and being held accountable for things you do. Our teachers are definitely preparing us to enter a work environment and be impactful to the worksite.
So far in my class we have done a couple of projects. When we started, we were doing demolition work. We were tearing down the old house made by the students who were there before we arrived. After we finished and the room was all clear, we started making our own houses. All the students got into groups and my group was made up of my classmates from our school. William, Mike, Aaron and I started with the bottom of the house making the base. After we made all the walls and our ceiling, we started to make accessories such as a working table, and just recently I made a bench for our room. Along the way throughout the process of making our rooms, our teacher taught us how to use different tools. Due to my past experience, I knew how to use some of the tools, but this class has given me the opportunity to get more practice with those tools with which I had experience and ones that I am using for the first time. Although I do not plan to continue and go into this trade as a job, I’m glad to know that I have that option, and I came out of this with a lot of knowledge of this trade. It has given me a lot of perspective especially since our school is primarily focused on architecture and definitely a lot more appreciation for what these people do to make designers’ dreams come true.