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My first part-time job was at this old appliance store, I was 14. In the back they had a small repair shop, from ye olden days when such stores actually repaired stuff. The repairman was this older gentleman that used to work in telecom, but had retired back to his small home town (where we lived), and repaired the stuff at the shop, at his own leisure. Let's just say things took forever, and the backlog was probably as long as the stores inventory.

But my first day there, after dusting and throwing cardboard, he asked me "Hey kid, wanna learn on how to solder?" and we spent a good hour going through the basics. That sparked my interest in electronics, and put me on my path the electrical engineering.

I still do a lot of soldering, as I build guitars, and repair audio equipment. I enjoy the tranquility soldering gives me...the things that usually suck, is not the soldering itself, but the environment you work in. You don't always get the circuit boards out. Sometimes you're working in a rats nest. Sometimes you don't helping hands.