Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Machine sounds]
>> Cale Holmes: This major was, like,
the only thing I'd ever really thought
about doing, you know what I mean?
I've been around this all of my life.
There's pictures of me when I was two years old and sitting
on a backhoe, you know, trying to run it and just waiting
for somebody to start the key.
I've just always enjoyed being able to take
that machine and do something.
You know, move dirt with it, and I just think it's neat
to be able to run something that big and that massive and be able
to do something so fine with it,
and just something that's always really interested me.
[ Music ]
>> Cale Holmes: Hi.
I'm Cale Holmes.
I'm from Canton, Pennsylvania.
I'm in the heavy equipment operator program here
at Penn College.
You have two semesters before you actually get into a machine.
You come in, and you do your site modifications
and your mechanics, and you do have all these prerequisites
and safety classes and everything.
All the bookwork it takes to know how that machine works,
all the safety hazards with the machines.
So when you're third semester comes, when you get in there,
you know everything that's going on.
In the third semester, would have been, you know,
we were up there for two days.
We went over just kind of housekeeping stuff.
Within two days, we were assigned a piece of equipment,
and we could pick what we wanted to start out on, and it's just
like that first day, everybody goes out and gets
in their machine and turns the key, it's just, you know,
finally, you know, this is what we are here for.
And get to go out and we go and you start moving dirt.
I mean, that's what everybody was there for, and everybody,
you could tell, everybody's excited
because this is what we spent a year waiting to do, you know,
and we finally get to do it.
The school has dump trucks, articulated trucks,
rigid frame trucks, brand-new CAT equipment, it's, like, I mean,
the latest and greatest.
I mean, there's so much equipment up there
that everybody had something to do every day.
There's more equipment than students.
That's, that's for sure.
Everything I've ever heard from the industry
about Penn College is just, like, everybody, they're,
they're taking up the students as fast as they can get them, you know,
I mean, it's take a Penn College student, they graduate,
and you just take some average Joe off the road,
the Penn College student has so much more knowledge
and has the background of what's going on when we get there.
Penn College student, they graduate is going to be more
of an investment than the other person just
because of their knowledge of what's going on.
They're going to make the company's money back a lot
quicker than the other person, you know, when they got
to train them for safety.
When I was in high school, my last year of high school,
I was looking at, well, do I go, I go to school, do this,
or do I just try to go out into the field
and try to make it, you know.
But I really thought about it, and it really made so much sense
to come here and get the degree, and it's something I'm going to,
I'm going to have that degree for the rest of my life.
I mean, yeah, it's, it's two more years
out of, out of my life.
I mean, that's really not much, and once I have,
once I come out here and have that degree, I just,
I really the potential to do whatever I want.
[ Music ]