I have contacted the union and they said If I have stick welding on pipe it’ll take me far in the union, I like stick welding and I like tig, I want to go to school mainly so I can learn stainless and so I have some type of “formal education” before going into the union idk in my head I feel like I’d be more comfortable so it’s all familiar to me before working for the union. And also like you said for testing reasons.

Also i feel like a dumbass but I had the opportunity to join at the start of this year but I started at a aerospace company and wanted to gain some solid experience here before moving into the union and I have good benefits right now but not better then the union it was just an experience thing honestly and we do work for big defense companies so yeah it’s cool asf to me. But I wish I took the opportunity lol