what's up everybody my name is wiley messer and i am the new host a new host
for weld.com i am also the welding instructor at great crossing high school in georgetown kentucky
and today's video we wanted to spend a few minutes
uh talking to you about women in welding and giving you a student point of view
of that so we sat down with three of our students today and had a brief discussion about what uh
their thoughts are as far as welding and what being in the industry as a young lady seems like
and we got a a small peek into the thoughts and ideas of a young woman going into the industry
oh all right abby please introduce yourself tell us about what you do
uh hi i'm abby christopher i do all-star cheer and i also cheer for the school
i'm the skilled usa secretary and the great crossing ffa reporter hi i'm alexandria
courtney i competitively jump horses and i weight lift i'm also the skillsusa treasurer
hi i'm tia bennett i'm an officer cheerleader and i was a cheerful school and i'm the skillsusa
reporter and the great crossing ffa secretary awesome thank you appreciate you coming down
and talking to us about this stuff um as you guys know it's uh what is international women's month
women's week or tomorrow's national women's day national women's day but it's the whole month
so a lot of people are talking about women in skilled trades and things like that this week so
just uh we just want to kind of get your perspective on on things because we we see all the
time um women in welding from the adult point of view and like after you're out of high school and
like on on the job and in the career so we just want to ask you guys a couple questions and get
your guys's opinion on things and feel free to tell me anything you want um we don't have to
limit ourselves on on what's discussed here um so uh i'll just ask these questions out
and whoever wants to answer them feel free to answer them um i'll start with this one uh do
you think growing up that welding was a possible career for you if not what career ambitions did
you or do you currently have going forward um well growing up i didn't really know what welding was
like i've always like i've seen my dad do it but i never really knew what it was
so when i was able to learn what it was um i still don't see it as like a possible like full-time
career but it's something i would like to do like in like my off days or like the weekends
with my dad and like as an actual career i want to be like something with like math like a cpa
an accountant like something like that yeah your dad and your family run a pretty good size welding
and repair business so that would definitely be useful for you to have this skill to be able to
pass that off and into your family's business anyone else um i definitely did think it was a
possible career choice i wasn't really introduced to welding but trades in general like my dad
basically does engineering maintenance at toyota and he always had me working
on things at the house with him and my parents both always encouraged me to go into stem
yeah that's super cool um so do you see see yourself going into the welding engineering
side of things or do you just see yourself going into like mechanical engineering like generalized
i probably would go into welding engineering since i know i actually enjoy welding yeah i think it's
i think it'd definitely serve you well along the way um do you any thoughts um well i never
thought about it growing up because i never really knew what it was until i got like to high school
i was once i was younger i was wanting to work with animals and be like more like the medical
side of a lot of things and i still continue to plan on my medical goals but i want to do welding
that's like a little side hobby just for fun yeah i mean you can make a fairly decent living
um just doing side work i mean as i mean i'm a teacher but during the summer i'm
i do welding work all year round so i usually make close to my teacher salary just during
the summer our next question is uh do you have any anyone in your family who is a welder or in
another skilled trade i think we kind of touched on that a little bit so abby would you tell us
about your your family business um and give us their your business name and everything so the
people on the youtubes can can hit you up for some work so my uh grandfather and my dad um actually
own a repair business in lancaster kentucky called christopher repair um my grandfather started it
i don't even know how long ago but my dad started working in there like growing up so that's where
he learned everything from he learned everything from his dad and my older brother also does
um mechanics with john deere and he's kind of learned that from my dad and it's kind of like
a pass down thing um but yeah my dad does welding he'll like do like um bore welding and like cut
out like stuff with a board machine that's what he really does a lot with welding and stuff like
that yeah and so that a lot of that's like heavy equipment repairs things like that so like our
first assignment is building a pad like you guys build pretty thick pads um on a lot of heavy
equipment repair like on the buckets and scoops and things like that you have to do a lot of
pad building like resurfacing so like that would be something like you'd be able to go out there
and do in between your your financing gig just rebuild all that stuff my dad recently like
the beginning of the year the end of last year actually did a job at will's work for a guy at
a construction company and he had to like build up like something and then cut it back out and like
i don't know what it was like you have to have no clue but build up the surface and then get it
back to a smooth plane yeah he had to do something like that so it's like a lot of welding but then
like a lot of grinding on that too real fun alexander do you have any um i have a distant
cousin who does pipe welding because i knew my dad mentioned him like travel welding a lot
but other than that not really okay that's that's interesting enough i mean you didn't know much
about welding until like you you started here at the school so yeah that makes sense that's okay um
you'll be the first welder in your family i guess that'd be cool um my stepdad he's a contractor and
he does like floorings for toyota and he also part owns a welding company so there seems to
be a great uh sense of camaraderie among women in the skilled trades and welding in general are you
guys part of any of the women facebook groups or instagram pages or do you follow any like
famous women instagramers they're welders oh yeah i follow several on like especially instagram
and they'll come up on my feed like my explore page and i always like try to follow them
yeah do you have any of your favorites that stick out um i'm think it's like michaela welding yeah
she's with uh she's with us at webweb.com too so that's that's cool she's in i think she's an aunt
i personally don't follow anyone like i always get them like on my like tick-tock and i was like
like their stuff and like comment but there's a show shameless they have a female welder on there
yeah can you tell me about that i have no idea i haven't watched shameless like even tell you about
shane without the girl about the girl about the welder girl um so she dropped out of high school
because she had a baby and then got her ged took it in one day like all the classes and
stuff and then she went to welding school and she ended up like doing some like sketch like
illegal welding gigs that she didn't know yeah and then they're making like 500 bucks a night so
she's like let's keep doing it and then i finally got like a real welding job cool um i feel that um
i feel like i've been in those shoes before so um yeah so i think this is a really common question
um do you feel like you faced obstacles uh when first getting in the welding class like as a
girl like did you have like did you have like any any of the boys like give you push back or
like give you a hard time yes my own friends well your friends and your brother like your
brother's been with me for four years now so yeah um they like when we first started like
we were like we haven't even started welding it and we started talking about skills you say
officers and i was like oh i want to run they're like you don't know anything about welding you
can't weld like i'll be a better welder than you like don't even try and i did it anyways and
um well i mean and your your brother's gonna pay for four years and this is your first year
and you've already like blew right past him demolished demolished you feel like you picked
it up and like like progressed so fast because of the boys were giving you a hard time or do
you feel like it just like came to you easily i feel like i think both both like if someone
doubts me i'm gonna prove them wrong yeah well you're super competitive with your flipping yes
so like if someone's like no you can't do that or no i'm gonna be better than you no you're wrong i
will be better than you and i show them up that makes sense that works yeah i feel like i had a
little bit of a wall built up like a defensive like they're gonna doubt me so i'm gonna prove
them wrong and then it just came easily it was like fun i've always enjoyed doing hands-on stuff
so i just picked it up easily and then that extra drive helped push that oh it's good i'm
glad that worked out um so this is probably one of the more common questions we hear a lot is
what do the other women in your families say like your moms and grandma's cousins
how do they feel about you taking the welding classes i don't think i've ever seen my
my mom more like really like you're gonna do that like had no faith in me and it's weird because
like your whole family like you have like my whole family all the boys my dad my two brothers they're
all like crazy into it all and then there's me and my mom my mom was not very i mean she didn't
care but she was like you're not gonna have fun like you're not gonna like that yeah and
here i am liking it my mom was super supportive she thinks it's a great idea and she just loves
like uh me breaking like the glass ceiling like women in like a man's predominant field um she's a
little bit skeptical of how hard welding can be on your body like safety wise or in rough conditions
but the more i've like told her about welding and the different opportunities i have the more
supportive she is she just loves the idea of me being in like a man's field
yeah i like that idea too all right well i guess my last question for you guys would be
you have any advice for the like the freshman girls that are going to be
coming into welding next year as sophomores do you guys have any advice for them uh coming in
prove everyone wrong determination just come in do what you want kick butt take names
um i would probably say it's not as scary as it seems like coming into this class i was pretty
afraid of just the judgment of the people in the class not really what we'd be doing but
it's pretty it's a pretty fun environment and you help that by making it more of a safe environment
for us yeah i try to make sure everything's moderately safe and fair yeah and like also
agreeing with the like it's not as scary as it looks i was terrified to him i was like absolutely
i was scared i was like i don't want to catch my hair on fire i don't want my clothes being on fire
but um it's a very rare occasion when that will happen so yeah very far between but
it does it does it can't happen yeah that's very rare it's never happened to me before
you haven't got a fire yet i haven't caught on fire either i needed i have been like burn holes
in my shirt but i don't kind of fire um last week in six hours all the boys caught on fire
aren't they doing overhead though they were running overhead all right
well i believe that is the timer uh our time is up if you guys will um plug the instagram plug
your instas uh get that media plugs it should go right there as i like yeah yeah okay it's abby
christopher to ours and i'll spell it out a b y c h r i s t o p h e r r two ours cool okay mine's
ap courtney06 and then mine's tia cia some people can't figure that out that's a little dot and i'm
scoring a dot makes a little smiley face and then bennett b-e-n-n-e-t-t cool awesome i hope you all
enjoyed the video we shot for you today um i hope some of the answers um peaks of interest for some
of you and i really hope this video went out to some of the young ladies that are interested in
the welding programs and i hope you decide to take one you guys will be seeing more me in the future
so that's all for now i hope you have a great rest your day and i will see you tomorrow