Carpenter
Working with his hands led to a varied career with job satisfaction
NC was born in the Philadelphia area, one of 9 children; his father was a truck driver, his mother a full-time parent to her extensive brood.
During high school, NC was an average student, uninterested in his classes except for “shop.” Following high school, he worked as a clerk in a local department store, where a high school friend was also working part-time while attending Millersville College to become a high school shop teacher. The friend invited NC to visit at college for a weekend, where NC toured rooms of vast equipment involved in the curriculum: table saws, lathes, band saws, metal working, electric panels, graphic arts and more, which sparked his interest in teaching high school “industrial arts.”
FIRST CAREER PATH
Upon college graduation with his K-12 teaching certification, NC was lucky to find employment for the next six months as a substitute teacher filling in for a shop teacher taking a half-year sabbatical from teaching, which led to an offer of full time employment as a shop teacher in another high school, which lasted for several years until he was furloughed due to declining enrollment within that school district.
SECOND CAREER PATH
According to the teacher’s union contract, the school district would be obligated to offer NC full time employment if and when enrollment increased the need to expand the teaching staff but in the meantime, NC needed full time employment, which he found working with a carpentry contractor, where he continued his “hands-on” training under the tutelage of a master carpenter. Soon NC was promoted to job foreman, where he supervised other carpenters and his financial compensation was increased accordingly. Enjoying the work and the increased earnings, NC turned down several offers from the school district to return to full time teaching. However, one school district offer was “final notice” since the union contract did not obligate the district to extend any further employment offers if their final offer was declined.
TAKING A RISK TO CREATE A HYBRID, THIRD CAREER PATH
In assessing the benefits of teaching or working for a carpentry contractor, NC opted for a hybrid career decision, incorporating the best of both worlds. By deciding to return to teaching, NC assumed there would be no further furloughs but if so, he would have already established himself with his carpentry employer or he could take a risk and start his own carpentry business. So his financial security seemed to be reasonably secure going forward, both for the present with his teacher’s salary and also for the future with an eventual teacher’s pension upon retirement.
Concurrently, NC decided to start his own carpentry contracting business which he could pursue when not involved in teaching: nights, weekends and summers.
JOB SATISFACTION
For many years, NC had job satisfaction while teaching, aside from the financial issues. First, he enjoyed working with the students since he was able to teach them basic skills during their transition from freshmen who sometimes didn’t know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, to being able to perform basic carpenter, plumber and electrician tasks by the time they graduated. Second, NC had the academic freedom to develop his own curriculum to incorporate modern technology with the basic equipment.
Following three decades of balancing teaching with his own carpentry contracting business, NC decided to reassess his career goals. Now older and less tolerant of students who were more interested in playing with their personal technology than paying attention to learning the industrial arts (where lack of attention can be physically dangerous), NC opted to retire from teaching and devote his full business attention to expanding his self-employed contracting business, which has been continuously successful through several national economic cycles because he is able to control his costs and has a steady stream of business based on recommendations from many satisfied customers, who proudly show off NC’s finished projects to their families, friends and neighbors.
