(WACO, Texas) – Carlos Anaya enjoys the small-town life.
“I like being home,” the La Grange resident said. “It’s pretty calm. Being from a small town, you grow up with peace and not much traffic.”
Anaya made his way to Waco to attend Texas State Technical College. He received a certificate of completion in Electrical Construction at TSTC’s Summer 2024 Commencement held Friday, Aug. 16, at the BASE at Extraco Events Center in Waco.
Anaya was the first member of his immediate family to graduate from college.
“I feel like I can be an influence for my little cousin,” he said. “She is not into sports, but she is smart. She is trying to get into the top 10 percent of her class. I am trying to guide her to going to a good college. She has the brains and the GPA (grade point average).”
Anaya was born in Comonfort in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. He and his family lived in Mississippi before moving to Texas.
Anaya is a graduate of La Grange High School where he played football, did powerlifting, and was on the track and field team.
He learned about TSTC when he was in high school.
“At first, I was interested in welding,” Anaya said. “I enrolled for classes, but financially I could not live up here and in the end, I dropped out of welding and took a year off and worked.”
Anaya returned to TSTC to pursue Electrical Construction, which related to work he was doing before he enrolled again. He said he did not know much about electricity, but he quickly learned about electrical theory, estimating and the skills needed to do commercial, industrial and residential wiring.
Anaya said he was not sure if he would know anyone at TSTC, but discovered he had high school classmates in his program.
“The second semester was the most fun for me,” he said. “I got to meet a lot more people and got to talk more to my peers and instructors.”
David Garvin, an instructor in TSTC’s Electrical Construction program, said Anaya is naturally mechanically inclined.
“He had the perfect work ethic,” Garvin said. “He was just a sponge for information to soak it up. Show him once and that is all you need. The world would be better with a lot of Carloses.”
Garvin was also Anaya’s advisor for SkillsUSA, a nonprofit organization teaching employability, leadership and technical skills that can help students pursue successful careers and be part of a skilled workforce.
Anaya received a silver medal in the Electrical Construction Wiring contest at this year’s SkillsUSA Texas Postsecondary State Leadership and Skills Conference in Houston. He represented Texas at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in late June in Atlanta, Georgia, because the state contest’s gold medalist declined to attend. He said the experiences were fun.
“I was excited to go,” Anaya said. “At state, we did not even do commercial wiring; we did residential. At national, it was all commercial, so I enjoyed doing that.”
Now that Anaya has graduated, he said he will work with his uncle in construction in La Grange. Anaya said he wants to eventually join an electrical company.
“Don’t go for something you do not see yourself enjoy doing,” Anaya said.
For more information on TSTC, go to tstc.edu.
