Enzo, Kentucky
Photo and Interview by Enzo
What's your name and where are you from?
My name is Wiley Messer. I'm from state and ground, Kentucky.
What brought you to Georgetown?
I started teaching at Great Crossing High School, and then a year or two later, I moved here.
What are the different parts to a welding competition?
There are multiple parts to a welding competition. First, you got to think about the prep, the practice leading up to it. So we usually get our blueprints a week ahead. Then the students will spend a week or so practicing for that competition. Takes a lot of time, travel, and effort to get through that. A lot of cutting, prepping, contacting sponsors and things like that to get prizes and scholarships. Then we go into the competition itself. The students have to compete-machines break, things go haywire, and it's a constant running around, putting out fires, literally and figuratively, to make things run smoothly. Once that's done, we have to go into the judging portion, and we have to judge student work based off of codebooks and other things like that, too. Make sure that it is fair for everyone. When it comes to these competitions, the biggest community impact is the scholarships and the prizes that come from this. A lot of students will compete their absolute hardest to win these opportunities to go to schools for welding or other things, whatever they're wanting to do. So, I mean, there's a lot of money on the line when it comes to the scholarships for the students that make a huge impact.
What are different ways welders can interact with the community other than through competition.
So the welding students here at Great Crossing interact with the community in a few different ways. We help a lot with the canned food drives for the Amen House. We do a lot of community projects, helping repair equipment for farmers. We do odd min projects here and there just to help anybody that needs something in our community that needs stuff fixed. We repair a lot of odd, uh, weird metal stuff. We don't even know what it is. Half the time it's just broken. They bring it in, we fix it and send it back. So there's a lot of outreach with maintenance and repair in our community. We've made a few projects to auction off for a few different charities, but that's about it.
Here in Kentucky, are there any welding jobs that are specific to this area?
So welding is an internationally necessary career. In our local community, we have a massive need for welders in manufacturing, maintenance, and construction. There are, I want to say, last time I looked, 345 ish, open jobs in our community for welders.
What do you think are some qualities that make a good welder?
Patience, steady hands, and wanting to play with fire.