Personal Narrative: Stick Welding

When I was younger, I would spend many weekends staying with my step sister in Muncie. She lived with her boyfriend in a small house. I never knew what he did for a living, until one day he showed me a little mig machine that he had just bought from a buddy of his. He showed me the basics of what he does and said that all day he would go to his work and just weld different projects together. He told me stories about how he would go to places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, even Alabama and Georgia. He told me about how he would work on docks for people who had houses on the edge of lakes. When he was telling me these stories, I was sitting there like a little kid seeing his first monster truck. I was extremely interested in what he had

I was so intrigued by the whole process of taking 2 pieces of metal and joining them into one. He could tell I was interested in this, and he asked me if I wanted to try welding on his new machine. The fact that he was going to let me use his machine blew my mind. He then grabbed some scrap metal, a few pieces of sheet metal and a few short pieces of rebar, and showed me what to do, how to hold the mig gun, how fast to move once I pressed down the trigger, and to trust my gear I had on to protect me. Ever since that day I have always had a keen interest in welding. When I found out that MACC had a welding program, I brought home a paper about MACC and the welding program and showed my parents. They helped me get the things I needed once I was signed up for the course. When I showed up at MACC on the first day, I was nervous. No one from my school had went into the welding course with me. We went to our classrooms and I was surprised. The shop, even though it might look like much, was more than I had imagined. I was worried I would not be any good at welding when we ran our first bead, it looked absolutely disgusting. I realized then, that this would not be something I could master with a few tries. It was going to take time, practice, and a lot of patience to become a great

You may be asking “Why do you say that?”, well I believe that no matter how good you are at something, you can always get better. You can always do something slightly different and make yourself better at what you are doing. If practice makes perfect, then there’s no room for improvement. Having no room for improvement can make things feel boring. That is why I practice my welds every day when I am at MACC. Although flat position is said to be the easiest, and it’s the first one we start out on, I go back and do just single beads in flat position, also other positions like horizontal. Why I do this, is so I can keep improving in these areas while I am also practicing doing vertical or overhead. I want to be the absolute best I can be, and with practice, I can keep improving myself and making myself a better