How I Decided To Become A Master Electrician Part 7

I`ve always enjoyed working. It pains me not to work somewhere. I need structure. It helps the rest of my life knowing that I have somewhere to go and a plan for the day. Losing my job so quickly was rough. I spent days getting on Indeed and any other job lead website just trying to get an interview. I went on Google to find numbers of any electrical contractor that was in the area. Some of the companies closed down their business for different reasons. I found small jobs, but nothing was consistent work until October 2014.

I started working for another small company. They did a lot of life safety work. I started learning more about the commercial phase of the trade. It was a helpful experience, but it didn`t last long. I just didn`t have enough experience to stay on with companies. Around this time, I learned about the electrical apprenticeship. I never knew that there were other programs out there for electrical at this time. I found out that I needed more schooling than what I got from the one year program in order to get to journeyman status.

At that moment, I started to feel like I wasted a year of my life getting into that program. I wasn`t making very much money during that year of school. I could`ve gotten into IEC`s or ABC`s, or even the local union`s apprenticeship if accepted, and been making money while I learned. This is the downside to having no tradesmen in my family, or having no friends of the family to talk to before starting a career path like this. I didn`t have any guidance on how to get into the trade.

I ended up reaching out to this very small company that hadn`t reached their first full year in business. This was around November 2014. The owner was a master electrician in his late 20s. I worked with him whenever he needed extra help. It was not always consistent work. He let me know that when he took me on. This was the most helpful experience that I had gotten up to this point. I was at a point where I just didn`t know how I could make it in this trade. I wanted to learn so much as fast as I could, because I wanted to be great at this career. It started to seem hopeless. We were driving to a job and he told me how he got started. He let me know why he started his company. We had similar reasons why we went towards this career path. Talking to him during that time gave me so much hope for myself. To this day, I value that conversation, and everything that I`ve learned from him. He gave me the encouragement that I really needed. I started 2015 with a different mindset. I created new goals, and started working towards that first goal. I have to get the money together to pay my way into the electrical apprenticeship.