From the very moment I was able to remember, I remember loving cars. My life was intertwined with cars and my family supported that, so it was easy to get my hands on anything car related. I had a blue racecar bed and pictures of cars and famous racecar drivers all over my room. “Mom, when I grow up, I wanna be a racecar driver.” 

Mountains of Hot Wheels and tracks to race them on, it was amazing. Every holiday, Christmas, Easter, my birthday, everyone knew what to get me; it wasn't even a question. With all of that you may have thought I would grow out of it eventually; every boy likes cars at some point in their childhood, right? I didn’t, the admiration was so strong it stuck with me. 

As I started to get older, I became more and more fascinated with not just racing the car, but how it works. In my free time I would look up random questions I had about the function of cars so I would know the answer if someone asked me, and just to impress my mom with my new found knowledge. This wasn't the new me though; I still loved racing. I would go to racing events and watch the racecars zipping around passing each other and at one point I even acquired myself my own pit pass to go down on the race track and see what it was like. On the weekends I would go with my mom to attend dirt bike and quad racing. I got in for free since she was the EMT on site in case things went sideways, so it was a win-win. 

When it was time for me to start high school, the value of racing cars was being overtaken by my love in fixing them. It was kept alive though by going go karting almost every week; I became really good at it and I would get first place almost every time. I loved it, but I slowly stopped going, things got more busy, and we ran out of time to go. 

My junior year, I found the perfect class, Auto Tech I. I thought, If this class has anything to do with working on cars, I’m going to love it. Sure enough, It was my favorite class. I looked forward to it every day I had it and with my prior knowledge of my whole life, I excelled at it, quickly moving on to Auto Tech II and finishing them both with A+’s. 

Now it’s my senior year in high school and I’m in Advanced Auto Tech. I have taken what I’ve learned from all these classes and applied it to fix my own car and even so many of my friends and families. It puts a smile on my face every time someone trusts me with a problem they have in their car and I get immense satisfaction when I’m done and the problem is no more. I have used these talents to give me a big push towards my dream, a job as a Lube Technician for a Wilde Subaru Dealership. Here I do maintenance and basic fixes on customers' cars, a fantastic start at the bottom of the totem pole.

My next steps into the future are to attend WCTC to earn all of my ASE certifications and my Associates degree in Automotive Technology. Then from there I hope to use my years of experience and degree to continue to do what I love so much and know so well, as an Automotive Service Technician.