Forging Futures: Real Stories from Our Graduates

It was late in my junior year in high school and I was not looking at colleges, not knowing what I wanted to do except I knew I wanted to work outside and work with my hands. I would scroll through TikTok and y’all randomly popped up on my page and I started looking into it more and realized what y’all offered. We saw we could do a tour so we planned a visit and got all the information we needed. I knew I wanted to come here especially after y’all said you can teach us starting from not knowing anything at all. Graduated high school and I was accepted to the school and 3 months later I was on my way to Wyoming. Started a week later and met some awesome people and really cool instructors. They taught and helped me figure out absolutely everything and I graduated what felt like only a short 3 months later. Got a job about 3 months after and I started a TIG welding job and it wasn’t even like I stopped welding. Got right back into my groove and I’m now looking for somewhere new to go, preferably downhill because I had a lot of fun doing it in school.

From high school, I went and was a labor building bridges and then I was a pile buck for about a year then I was welding but didn’t love structural so I saw WWA and said I’m going. october 24th I made the drive from Grand Forks to Gillette Wyoming in search of being able to be called a hand. I started out behind, wasn't really being serious, and then a man named Colton Pfeil became my lead on third, and at the end of it, I was a month ahead. the people I met at WWA will be my friends for life and now 6 months later I talk to about ten of them daily. I would go back and do it again and again if I could but now I’m chasing shutdowns up north. landed myself in a sugar beet plant and have been here for about five months now. a ton of stainless welding and carbon too, it’s about done so I’m excited to see where I go next.

In high-school i was never quite sure what I wanted to do, then i took a welding class through the school my junior year and fell in love with it, wwa came on the blue collar tour and i decided that i wanted to go to school there and applied and got accepted in my junior summer, came and visited my senior year and enjoyed it and got to see the city and surrounds towns and the school looked great, went to school and graduated in 3 months never failed a test and got the “making a hand program” shortly after i was told by a fellow graduate about a job for zachry and i took it up and have learned a lot in my last 11 months of work and we’ve had a few shutdowns with 90 hour weeks making 30 an hour starting out of school. it’s a local job so i haven’t branched out this job or looked into it much but i plan to in the next year.

Had a really hard time in school with a lot of things that just wasn't my thing. So I applied to WWA during my junior year in high school and got accepted. Finished out high school and then started to get ready to head out to Wyoming for WWA. When I got to Wyoming it was absolutely freezing. But I was welcomed into the school and settled in really quickly. Made some lifelong friends along the way. I ended up moving through the program rather quickly and got a couple of extra certifications and graduated a little bit early. But I had an amazing time and learned so much from the instructors and still talk to them every once in a while. Thank you for your time.