Meet Brian: “I Promised My Parents I’d Build Them a House.”

“I promised my parents that I’d find a way to buy a small property and build them a house,” Brian says. “Hopefully in ten years, I can apply all the skills I’m learning here to do that.”

Featuring Brian L.

Brian has already told his parents what he's going to do for them.

"I promised my parents that I'd find a way to buy a small property and build them a house," he says. "Hopefully in ten years, I can apply all the skills I'm learning here to do that."

He graduated from Healdsburg High in the spring after four years he describes as a bit insane. For the first two of them, he was on the track everyone told him to be on - a college readiness program, solid grades, the whole apparatus working exactly as designed. It just wasn't working on him.

"I had good grades, but I just wasn't happy," Brian says. "All around me, people were studying for the SAT but I just didn't feel a connection. I was pretty depressed and not motivated to do my work, even though I had the ability."

The exception was one class, taught by Mr. Pagni, where the work involved actually building something.

"I really enjoyed it because it was more hands-on. I was finally happy because I felt connected with the teacher, the other students, and the work." He puts it plainly: that class did more for him than the rest of his courses combined.

From there, the next step was obvious to everyone including Brian. He enrolled in the third Healdsburg cohort of the North Bay Construction Corps, a program that takes students across the full range of the construction trades - not one narrow skill, but a working tour of the industry, so students can find the part of it that's theirs.

Brian found his fast.

"I am really drawn to welding and electrical, it's fun messing with all those tools." Then he describes what he's actually picturing: driving through town years from now, pointing at a building. Hey, I built that. I put electricity in that building.

In June he heads to a two-week bootcamp with NBCC, framing out two houses in Graton. It's the real thing - full days, real sites, real deadlines - and it ends with a hiring event where contractors come looking. Brian is a strong prospect.

None of which means he's finished with school.

"I'm not giving up on my education," he says. In addition to working in construction, he plans to study finance at Santa Rosa Junior College - he's good with numbers, and he'll need them when he's running his own business.

He's four years out of the engine of high school that nearly ground him down, and he already knows what he's building, and who he's building it for.