Christopher Bombard

For a short time in high school, I took culinary or cooking related classes between 2 schools. During this time I learned how to work in a kitchen with a team, was taught basic starter recipes, and even passed my food handlers test on the first attempt.

I love working with food, and these classes helped me learn how and why certain recipes require more or less time, while also learning patience in the kitchen space. I also learned to be careful with kitchen based appliances like ovens, blenders, food processors, and more.

I also learned the importance of sanitization in the kitchen, between learning not to cross contaminate the food, and washing your hands when entering the kitchen space, washing your hands after dealing with raw meats, and again washing your hands when leaving the kitchen. I believe these sanitization skills can help me on any job by keeping my hygiene up, which can encourage future customers to engage with me in the work space.

During my time in high school, I chose to take two years of Auto Tech class, which taught me the basics of small repairs on vehicles, like changing brakes, patching holes in tires, disassembling and reassembling engines from small lawn mowers to your everyday sedan, and so on.

Most days in this class, our tasks revolved around a team, which taught me how to communicate and work with team members. We were taught a range of helpful things such as how to find problems with vehicles, how to remove parts of vehicles correctly without breaking components or injuring ourselves, and we also had the opportunity to learn how to weld, which i unfortunately missed due to medical problems.

Since I have taken this class, these skills have saved me in serious situations involving vehicles. I was able to use my automotive knowledge to help myself, and others get back on the road in their vehicles.

Through March 2020 - May 2021, while schools were closed due to the pandemic, I offered to help around at a family appliance store for small pay here and there. During this time, I improved my strength while moving heavy appliances like refrigerators/freezers, and learned the installation process for most common household appliances like stoves, dryers, washing machines, etc.

I was also able to work on building the ability to sell said items to customers, showing them which items fit their budget, which appliances would be the cheapest or easiest to fix if something happened along the line past the installation date, and I was able to assure them that if anything did happen to their appliance, we would be there as soon as we could to fix it.

This volunteer work helped me with my social skills along with the ability to talk to customers about store product, and ultimately taught me how to better my communication among customers and co-workers.