Lessons from the Ice Rink Build
By Meghan Tarnaski, CT junior
The bright twinkling lights, the smiles on the faces of young and old, the merry melody dancing in the chilly December air . . . As I drive by the ice skating rink in downtown New Castle, I have so many reasons to smile because I had a hand in creating it!
As Construction Trades student from Lawrence County CTC, my time working on the ice skating rink taught me so many lessons that will last a lifetime. It was an amazing experience and a lot of fun to build. It was awesome meeting new people and helping give the community a place to come together to celebrate the holidays.
Even though the days spent on construction were really cold, building the ice skating rink was rewarding. Being cold gave my friends and me motivation to get as much work done as we can do that day -- to get the job done correctly so we did the job right the first time, efficiently as we learned to work smarter, and quickly because we literally needed to keep moving to stay warm! A lesson I learned was to always layer clothing when working outside in the wintertime. Even when I think that I have enough layers, I should probably add a few more — just in case.
My teacher, TJ Kelly, taught us so much. One lesson that will help me in my carpentry, my chosen field, is how to read and follow blueprints, a skill that we will use a lot in my chosen field when we get older. While I was working, I learned other important skills for my shop like how to screed sand to make the surface smooth and to work with different string line techniques.
Lessons we can all take with us in our future careers, no matter our job title, include how to work smarter not harder. Last year when my class helped with the ice rink, it was difficult to spread the sand for the base of the ice because it was all dumped in one large pile. As a result of the memory of struggles from last year, we put our heads together, used a bit of critical thinking, and decided to have several smaller piles of sand placed in multiple dump sites so that we could spread the sand — one section at a time. Because of this change, we found that we could save a lot of our energy; the task wasn’t as difficult, and it seemed to be way more effective — hence the phrase: Work smarter not harder.
Another life-lesson that working on this project gave my class was a chance to work together as a team -- a great one, in fact. To get big projects like this done, we learned that we needed to get along and do our jobs; we also needed to put our pride aside and ask for help. I felt that my shop-mates were able to step up to help me just as much as I was there to help them. If we didn’t get along and work together, meeting deadlines would be more difficult (and we didn’t want to disappoint anyone by not finishing the job) and we wouldn’t have been proud of our final project -- which was not the case; we are very proud of our work. It was a great team-building exercise.
I believe that with this ice rink will bring the community together. People of all ages now have a place to have fun and come together. With the rink, the fire pits, and the warming tents, this new tradition has become a lot of fun for the whole family.
In all, It was amazing to help construct this ice skating rink. It was an honor to help make it happen, and I hope that in the future, our city will call upon us to get the job done, once again!
