After graduating high school, many young adults don’t know what they want to do with their lives. Colton Hirst, a 2020 MHS alumna, just finished his first year at MCCC for Automotive Engineering and Design. Hirst was involved in many of the CTE programs at MHS such as Automotive, Construction, and Electro-mechanical classes.

Hirst said that the CTE classes at Monroe helped prepared him for his career.

“I have done a lot in auto shop, and I’ve even done the pain of wiring a car. Electromechanical showed me how to solder wires together. That’s a very important skill to learn when working with wiring, and I use it a lot,” said Hirst.

Hirst said he became interested in cars when he was only 4 years old. He tells a story of when the movie “Cars” came out and from then on, he started to play with toy cars. At age 16 he got his first car.

“At 16, I got a 1979 Camaro for my first car that my dad and I rebuilt the motor in at Monroe High’s auto shop. I continue to tinker on the Camaro and I also deck out my winter daily driver to make it faster and louder,” said Hirst.

Now, he spends his free time working on cars, running, and volunteering at our local radio station MPACT radio station Rewind 94.3.

“I’ve been working there (at MPACT) since September of 2020 and still work there,” Hirst said. “What I started doing was editing audio files for the station and creating promotions for the station to be played on the air. Just last week, I finished my first show with Skip and the main host Tim Perry. I did all the transitions from song to song with talking and sound effects in between. I also get to talk on the air for a little bit as an introduction about who I am on the show on June 3 at 8pm on rewind 94.3,” Hirst said.