Electrician via College

Pursue college or a trade? JD is now glad that he accepted his parents’ advice but his career path was not decided until he experienced two possibilities for adult occupations. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

JD is the middle son of three brothers. His father has an electrical engineering degree and now owns and manages a large, electrical contracting business which hires only members of the local electrician’s union. His mother is a homemaker. 

There has been no specific career direction from either parent, beyond the general recommendation to “do what you want to do, follow your passion” which JD understood to mean “find interesting work which will pay enough to support yourself financially.”

CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER

JD always enjoyed accompanying his father to jobsites, to see workmen active in the construction industry. He vividly recalls one time, in the middle of the night, his dad woke him to ask if he would like to ride along to respond to a call for emergency assistance needed at the local telephone company’s main transmission building. The trip itself was an exciting adventure through the snow and when they arrived, telephone company workmen had already pulled a maze of wires onto the floor in their unsuccessful attempt to find and fix the cause of the problem affecting thousands of homes served by the telephone company. JD was fascinated by all the wiring in the room and his father’s calm ability to direct the workman to find the problem and fix it. 

JD can trace his early interest in becoming an electrician to that one event. However, as will be seen, his career path was not a straight line forward, from that early morning adventure into the adult world. 

SCHOOL DAYS

The public school system which JD attended offered a wide variety of courses, for both college prep and vocations. JD always liked to work with his hands, building things. So, in the 7^th grade, he took a ‘pre-engineering’ course where the students designed cars and robots, created the drawings to produce them and then used tools to build the operable race cars and ‘hand crushing’ robots. Another project created a low flying, hovercraft. 

During school vacations, JD worked as an electrician’s helper, both in warehouses and on job sites, while sorting extension cords, holding ladders for the workmen, driving a truck, and delivering materials, sometimes including ice on hot, summer days. 

COLLEGE – GO OR NOT GO? 

JD enjoyed working at construction sites with electricians and other trades. So, after talking with workmen about how they learned their jobs and about union apprentice programs, he concluded that after his high school graduation, he could start earning money immediately and avoid college by joining a union apprentice program. 

However, when JD advised his father of his plan, the response was: “No, you should go to college, because you don’t want to be just pulling wires your whole career. An engineering degree will give you a broader background.” JD resisted, declaring that it would just delay his career in construction, and he could learn to be an electrician through the union’s training program. His father replied “A college degree before the real world, worked well for me, and it will work well for you. I’ve been in this industry for a long time, so I’ve experienced what’s best for you in the long run.” JD still didn’t agree. Then to close the argument, his father said: “You need to trust my advice but if you don’t, I know folks in the electrician’s union, and I’ll arrange for them to not admit you unless you first go to college.” 

Years later, JD still wonders if his father was kidding him, but his dad sure looked and sounded serious! JD always had a good relationship with his father, so he decided to avoid resisting further and accept that advice, postponing his earlier plan to start earning money immediately. “And who knows,” thought JD to himself, “maybe my father does know what is best.”

COLLEGE – DECISIONS

When JD committed to attend college, his first question was: which one? His father had not suggested a specific college so his decision to apply could be anywhere and was not limited to preparing for a specific career. 

While JD was pondering where to apply to college, he attended a football game weekend on the main campus of the large, state university. He liked the energy of the students and alumni and their obvious loyalty to their school. So, this would be his school, assuming he would be accepted to enroll.

His next question: main campus or branch campus? While leaning toward applying to attend the main campus, this time JD’s mother intervened with her strong opinion: “You should get accustomed to college life first at the nearby, branch campus. Then after the first two years, if you keep your grades up, you will automatically transfer to the main campus. That plan worked well for your father so it will work best for you.” 

JD always had a good relationship with his mother. He didn’t think it was worthwhile to push back against his mother’s recommendation since he thought: “Ok, it will be closer to home for doing some laundry and occasionally enjoying home cooking. I’ll get to the main campus eventually and who knows, maybe my mother does know what is best.”  

COLLEGE – NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Content with being able to choose his university, JD worked hard within all his early, required courses so that he would qualify to move to the main campus for his final two years. This university had a well-known agricultural program which utilized large farming machines as part of the student learning process. JD considered pursuing a modern farming career which involved operating heavy equipment, so he chose to major in ‘biological engineering’ adding business related courses such as computer science and entrepreneurial classes, to prepare for eventually owning and managing his own farm. JD enrolled in an ‘animal husbandry’ course to learn how to raise and manage livestock, thinking the course would be fun and easy but found it very difficult. An arborist course involved climbing tall trees – fun but not easy. 

SUMMER EMPLOYMENT AS AN INTERNSHIP AND POSSIBLE CAREER PATH

While finding his passion for farming during school classes and related field work, JD’s summer work continued his earlier interest in working with his hands within construction projects, specifically as an electrician. 

Eventually, JD would have to choose a career path between his two, leading contenders: farming with a biological engineering degree or electrician with an electrical engineering degree. Could he somehow get involved with both at the same time? 

CAREER CHOICE FOLLOWING EXPERIENCE WITHIN TWO INTERESTING OPTIONS

Considering the potential difficulties in managing livestock but not envisioning any difficulties working as an electrician, JD began to lean toward an electrician’s career. And maybe he could do some farming as a side hobby?  

JD had a back-up plan if he had not been admitted to the electrician’s apprentice program: pursue a job in agriculture. Fortunately for the welfare of the cows and pigs he might have mismanaged as a farmer, JD was accepted into the apprentice program, which officially launched his career as a union electrician. 

UNION TRAINING AND PROMOTION OPPORTUNITIES

The process of joining a union may involve, as it did for JD, a test of your self-discipline and willingness to submit to some apparently unreasonable demands. For example, when JD applied to the electrician union’s apprentice program, he was notified to attend a meeting on a certain date, at a certain time. From talking to union members during his summer helper stints, JD knew better than to try to change his appointment time to better suit his personal schedule. It didn’t matter to the union that JD was then a student, living 3 hours away, set to graduate from college the day following the appointment mandated by the union. So, JD traveled several hours to meet the union officials regarding his application, and then traveled several hours back to school. 

JD assumed, correctly, that there would be other challenges to meet when experienced union members learned that he was ‘a college kid.’ But he also assumed, correctly, that being able to take the teasing while working hard to learn the trade, would eventually eliminate any hazing. 

Joining a union and learning on-the-job, while being paid as a union member from day one, involves the following steps, each with an increased level of compensation:

1. APPRENTICE – The new union member works at assigned worksites and jobs, essentially as a helper to start, while attending electrician’s school – at union expense – for 5 hours, two nights a week (Monday and Thursday) for 4 years. There was much to be learned, well taught by experienced construction workers. 

CHALLENGES FOR NEW APPRENTICES

Some apprentice schoolteachers were tough on the new recruits; others were relaxed and more focused on education than commanding respect for senior union members. 

An apprentice quickly learns that there may be more than one way to accomplish a task, but the only acceptable way at that moment, is to precisely follow the instructions of the more experienced union worker who provided the instructions. The apprentice could have learned how to manipulate wires one way during last week’s apprentice school, then another way from a foreman the next day and then a third way from today’s job foreman. There is no option to disregard the most recent task instruction, to consider all the different instructions and adopt the one you think best under the present circumstances; that will have to wait until when you have ‘topped out’ – the union term for having graduated from apprentice school. 

2. JOURNEYMAN – Your on-the-job education is never complete, but at least your formal schooling is now complete, and your hourly pay has been raised significantly. You still follow instructions from your job foreman. 

Challenges are not necessarily avoided just by advancing through the union ranks. For example, JD was always self-motivated to want to learn more about his trade – how to do it better and more quickly – and take on greater responsibilities. JD expressed his wishes to more senior union members but was always told: “Your time hasn’t come yet.” So, he decided to keep working harder and learn more on his own, including finding books on business leadership, so that he would be ready for when an opportunity with more responsibility, was available. 

3. JOB FOREMAN – Receives overall job assignments from the General Foreman and then implements them by laying out the work, ordering materials and interacts with customers as necessary, while directing the construction tasks of apprentices and journeymen. 

4. GENERAL FOREMAN – Receives job assignments from the Project Manager and then implements them by directing the several Job Foremen assigned to complete the tasks. 

5. PROJECT MANAGER – No longer works in the field and no longer works with tools. Is assigned by the construction manager, before a job begins, to review engineered drawings for the proposed work, estimate the costs and profitability of the job, oversee the bidding process with different construction managers and if the bid is accepted, organize the manpower and make certain the job gets done within the agreed parameters and that the customer is pleased with the outcome. 

JD’s father estimated to JD that it would take at least 10 years’ experience in the field to be promoted to Project Manager and then do a good job in that position. When JD was promoted to Project Manager after only 7 years, he again wondered whether his father had just been kidding him about the time to learn the big picture sufficiently to run expensive and complex projects. (Editor’s note – JD’s father may have been sincere in his 10-year estimate but when he daily observed JD’s determination to self-educate while effectively managing skilled teams toward excellent results, it is likely that the father decided that JD’s talents would be more useful to the business by having responsibilities which combined business economics and supervision of skills by others.)

CAREER SATISFACTION

While JD always enjoyed working in the field, using his hands to bend conduit and being thrown (figuratively, not literally) into new jobsite challenges, he now finds that being able to correctly estimate the economics of a possible job, land the job for his employer, then design how to get it done, organize the labor and materials necessary, deal with customers and when completed, look back at that project having made both the customer, his business and their employees happy about the result, is a bit of a legacy, job by job. 

Adding ‘icing to the cake’, JD merged his farming passion with his electrical engineering career, by purchasing a 50-acre plot where, during time away from his project manager duties, he can farm by driving heavy equipment to plow the fields where no pigs or cows need to fear for their health or safety since no livestock have been invited to these 50 acres!