LCC graduate Kaitlyn Langston finds career with Spirit

 Kaitlyn Langston. Submitted photo.

A 2008 North Lenoir High School graduate, Kaitlyn Langston of Kinston was deciding what her next educational move would be. She discovered that she could take Lenoir Community College classes while attending high school, which led her to taking machining classes.

“I knew that I needed to get in on that opportunity because school wasn’t something I was really excited about at that time in my life, and I needed to start making plans to do something after I graduated,” Langston said. “I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. The school offered machining and I didn’t know what that actually was at the time.”

She said she loved her Ag Mechanics class that North Lenoir offered and she knew machining was dealing with machines, so she took a chance and enrolled.

“I enjoyed those types of courses,” she said.” Mr. Brian Edwards was the instructor for the machining class and I will never forget how much he changed my whole perspective on what I wanted to do with my career. He made the course enjoyable and sparked my interests in creating things.”

That spark grew into a flame and Langston completed her associate degree in Computer-Integrated Machining. While enrolled at LCC, she worked full time, which made time management one of her greatest challenges.

“Learning how to manage my time between work, school and personal needs and obligations was extremely challenging for me,” she said. “That is one reason why I chose to do a lot of online classes. I can be more flexible when it comes to the times I work on school work. My job is very demanding and requires a lot of my focus and time, being a lead and working a first shift schedule (7am-3pm). 

“When I was completing my associate degree, I was working on second shift (3pm – 11pm) so I was able to go to classes during the morning and work at night,” she said. “That is not the case working first shift. There aren’t a lot of options to take evening classes, so when I decided to go back for my bachelor degree, I knew that online courses were going to be my best bet to start with.”

She said when she was in high school, everyone was talking about Spirit. “I didn’t know what Spirit was or what type of company it was. Once I found out that Spirit made airplanes, I thought, wow that would be awesome to do for a living,” she said. “When I graduated I moved away because I thought I knew it all. Well, I didn’t know a fraction of what I thought I knew. So, I moved back after about six months and regrouped. I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

“I was working at a local restaurant and met Ron Schultz. He was the AMR composites instructor at LCC and he would tell me when classes were starting and insisted that I look into it. So eventually, I ended up taking late summer 2010 classes and was offered a position in April 2011.

She is currently the Spar Automatic Fiber Placement (AFP) Lead machine operator. “There are seven total operators in my crew, including myself.  I assist in the flow of production, help operators think through the troubleshooting process, prioritize workloads and direct personnel, assist with the root cause corrective action process (analyze potential problems and defects), certify machines, and certify personnel once training has been completed. There are many other tasks that I do or have a hand in but these are the main priorities on my list of duties.”

While there are other female operators at Spirit, Langston was the only female when she first started. “This is a predominately male field,” she said.

Langston said she was interested in how machines work and what they are capable of doing that led her into the field. “I have a very mechanical mind,” she said. “I enjoy making something form nothing and watching it take shape. I enjoy watching something we created together (at Spirit) come to life. Knowing the hard work that goes into each little piece to make it a complete finished product is very satisfying when it gets shipped out the door.”

Langston hopes to complete her bachelor’s degree in engineering and obtain employment in the engineering department or “maybe even one day move on to other companies and further my experience and skillsets.”

She said her mother was her role model. “She was a single parent with two kids and she made it work, somehow. I don’t know how she did it, going through some things that we did in life early on for my family was not easy.”

Langston said she lost her father at a young age and she had to grow up fast and help take care of her younger sibling. “I was no saint growing up either. I got into my fair share of trouble and drove my mom crazy. She persistently pushed through and instilled good values and morals in my sister and me, and taught us that nothing in this world is free, and as women, we will always have to do things ten times better.”

Thinking about her past, Langston stressed the importance of education. “It’s something no one can ever take away from you, and no matter what, you can take it anywhere you want in this world. There are endless possibilities out there,” she said. “Also, don’t forget to stop every once in awhile and appreciate the simple things. Sometimes I get so wrapped up with so much going on that I forget to just stop, and simply smell the roses or spend quality time with loved ones.”