Experience

Well this week I have been learning a valuable lesson. I'd have to admit doing fire alarm can be pretty boring sometimes especially as an apprentice since we're not always delegated the most complex tasks. But the past few days I've been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have my own long pipe runs. It's just some 3/4 pipe which it feels like I've ran thousands of times before, but I've usually been making bends and assisting in the thought process but never actually just my own run start to finish. These few days have made me realize that the little things that come with experience are sometimes the hardest. It felt like I wasted lots of times just having to run back and forth to forget some material that I probably should have thought about before hand. Another thing I had to work on was my soft touch. One of my runs was on a wall with slight angle changes neck to a plumbers pipe. So I felt it would only be craftman like to match all the kicks in the plumbers pipe and have everything match up perfect with the wall. Let me tell you this took quite the soft touch and mines needed a lot of work. At the end of the day I've been accomplishing everything and my journeyman thinks my pipe work looks pretty good, so I'm happy to be gaining experience and I definitely notice my own improvement.

The pain of not studying

I know I'm going to get a good lecturing for this one but here I go. So yesterday was the usually bi-weekly class session which of course comes with the usual test. I'll admit that I don't have the best studying habits but I'm a pretty quick learner and I usually go through the lessons and make sure I understand everything before it's testing time. Well this time around I kept pushing back studying til it was the last weekend before the test, but I also happen to be going to NY to visit my family at that weekend so I figured I just bring my books along and study in my downtime. Well I did glance at the books second and than once again pushed studying back figuring that I was pretty comfortable so Monday would be enough time to touch up on my weak spots, which probably would of worked if I didn't leave my books in NY at my mother's house along with the covenanted lesson packet :-|. The test ended up being extremely nerve racking for me just because I had recall stuff I learned 2 weeks ago. I ended up with a mediocre grade which was disappointing but I definitely learned a lesson. Procrastination is never a good thing.