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By KELLY RYAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 6, 2001
Dien Tran has already won the national welding championship. He's taken the $40,000 first prize. He's out-welded other national champions.
This summer, Tran, who spends 14 hours a day honing his skills at PTEC-Clearwater, will travel the United States to train for September's world welding championships in Seoul, Korea. Win or lose, the student that teacher Jerry Galyen calls "the Tiger Woods of welding" will have an array of lucrative jobs to consider.
"He's going to have a big decision ahead of him," Galyen said. "He's going to be offered some good jobs."
The stories of the Tampa Bay area's graduating valedictorians and salutatorians are well documented. But even the most academically gifted students are in the dark when it comes to their futures. They'll go on to college or junior college, but after that, who knows?
Not so for students saying goodbye to technical education centers. Students from those schools, from teenagers also enrolled in high schools to adults pursuing second careers, know exactly where they are going. Most can look forward to employers willing to pay top dollar for their technical skills.
"Everyone is searching for good technicians," said Warren Laux, administrator of the Pinellas Technical Education Center's Clearwater campus.
Tran, who left Vietnam in 1991, graduated from Lakewood High School, but he found engineering classes full at the University of South Florida. So, he took up welding.
Now, he enjoys reading blueprints and the precision of putting metal together to withstand 1,000 pounds of pressure -- a skill that could earn him up to $30 an hour.
His advice for other welders is, first, to practice often. Second, "Your hand needs not to be shaking."
Jason Borajkiewiez probably would have studied business at a four-year college if Crabby Bill's hadn't been short-staffed in the kitchen one night.
At the time, he was about 15 years old and couldn't remember his mom ever cooking anything fancier than mac and cheese. But he found himself at home in the kitchen, with an eye for presentation and a sense for spice.
"Everyone wonders where I got my cooking skills from," Borajkiewiez said.
Halfway through high school, he enrolled in PTEC's culinary arts program, where he has learned to carve carrots into butterflies, bake bread, and debone and stuff a whole chicken. He's at PTEC two hours a day and spends the rest at Dunedin High.
His teacher, Freddie Usher, raved about the composition of an appetizer platter Borajkiewiez prepared: the perfect balance of stuffed snow peas, prosciutto wrapped asparagus and other items.
For all of his talent, Borajkiewiez still eats frozen pizza most nights, though he does prepare gourmet meals -- such as lobster -- for special occasions.
After graduation Thursday, Borajkiewiez will attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York. He wants to experience all aspects of the business and one day own his own upscale restaurant. He guesses he can earn $40,000 to $150,000 a year once he's working full time.
"Most of them (his friends) are just going to go to a four-year university," said Borajkiewiez, who has won state cooking awards and soon will compete in a national contest. "I think I have a head start."
A severe kidney infection and surgery forced Belinda Davidson to miss the last two months of high school. She eventually earned her General Educational Development certificate, but ended up a waitress -- for 25 years.
Davidson always dreamed of leaving Denny's to become a nurse, but the single mother of three couldn't get up the courage until two regular, elderly customers said they were going to a nursing home and wanted her to care for them.
Davidson, 39, already helped them clean their home and brought them breakfast when they were sick. But she told them she couldn't give them medical care without a license. So, a year ago, she decided it was time to get a practical nursing license.
While she has been in school six or more hours a day at PTEC-St. Petersburg, she has kept a part-time job floating between several local hospitals as a patient care technician. In hospital rooms and classrooms, she is fascinated by what she sees and learns.
Some of it is pretty gross and overwhelming, though she said the rewards of a patient holding her hand or simply saying "thank you" make the work worthwhile. She knows that finding a full-time job when she's finished with school will be easy: Nurses are in short supply around the country.
"There's just such a need," said Davidson, who wants to be a hospice nurse. "You can go anywhere."
On Thursday, Davidson will walk in a graduation ceremony for the first time in her life.
"Come hell or high water, I'm walking," Davidson said. "Every time I think about it, I want to cry."