Here’s the deal…

Daniel Fech
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read
Voith Kaplan Turbine

Okay, so we’re all here taking this bear of a class because we gotta to graduate and all that. What brought me to this class was seven (7) (siete) freakin years of “I dunno what I wanna do when I get older” and really really stupid classes in community college. The mindset from highschool that came from literally not caring about school at all, and doing absolutely no homework unless I was forced to do it never really wore off when I started going to community college until about two years ago when I started working in restaurants. I HATE restaurants. I HATE customer service. But you know what I hate more than that? Not having enough money to even move out of my parents’ house into a low-rent apartment that will only take 2 months tops to get use to the smell. Plus, I felt like I was just wasting my life in community college not doing anything to put me on a path to graduation. So I decided I’d get in touch with my cousin. He graduated a few years ago from Penn State with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and he always talks about how much he loves what he does. And he brags about the money a little bit which struck my interest initially. He works for Voith, a German company that designs turbines for hydroelectric dams. Pretty much everything we’re gonna learn about in this class is what he does for a living. He took me up to his plant in York, PA and showed me around, and I immediately fell in love with the place. So much cool stuff. The day I went was the final day one of their turbines was being manufactured. It was a turbine for Hoover Dam, and it was an ABSOLUTE UNIT. I stood in AWE at the size of that lad.

So I decided this was the thing I want to do for the rest of my life. I graduated (finally) from Delaware County Community College with my associates in engineering, and trust me, I’m NOT looking back.

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