Sweeping, cleaning and organizing.

If there's one thing that bites about being a first year apprentice it's all the time you spend sweeping floors, cleaning up and organizing materials. The reason, of course, that new apprentices often do those jobs is because they don't know how to do a lot of other things. (And because an apprentice's hourly rate is low. No need for a journeyman to spend the company's money at twice the rate to get floors swept!)

Six months into my first year I've learned that what your foreman thinks about apprentices is just as important as how much you know when it comes to work assignments. The sub-foreman I'm working under right now is great. I've shown that I'm capable of doing a lot of things and he lets me do them. He'll give me assignments to run pipe just like anybody else and let me get it done because he knows I can. He'll give me the plans and let me and the brand-new R-worker pull wire. I get to do things like this without anybody standing over me because I've shown I'll get it done.

I'm not saying I never sweep or organize materials or walk the whole jobsite looking wire scraps. It's just that I only have to do those things when there are a lot of wire scraps laying around that need to be cleaned up, the material area is a mess or the floors are dirty - never as busy work.

Not everybody you'll work under is like that. Some foremen and sub-foremen out there think the only thing a first year apprentice is good for is menial tasks. Again, I MORE than happy to do things like sweeping and cleaning when they need to be done. But let me say straight out, being told to walk around again looking for trash that electricians made after you just spent an hour doing that, finished up and went to your boss to ask for something else to do is annoying.

As a first year apprentice you have to learn not to let that kind of thing bother you. You work hard and pay attention so that you can impress the people that are willing to let you go as far as you can, skill wise. For the few out there that don't have any interest in seeing what you're actually capable of the best you can do is just do what your asked to do and remember that in a few years this won't be the problem.

Tools of the Trade

If you asked electricians what the most valuable tool in their tool box was the most common answer would, by far, be their Kleins.

After last week, I'd offer a different answer. The most important piece of equipment any electrician can have is a reliable car or truck. In a week where the Federal Government was closed, every school district in the area shut its doors and when most private businesses closed up shop I was at work every single day.

My employer certainly would have understood if I had called in (and you MUST call in) to say that I couldn't make it because of the snow but the expectation is always that you show up for work. And in a profession where if you don't work you don't get paid, being there every morning at 6am is important.

I'm the new first year apprentice

When I was approached during class on Wednesday to be the blogger for my class my first thought after saying 'yes' was 'what the heck am I going to write about?' That Friday I ran into a guy on my job site who was finishing his very first week in the trade. It made me think of my first week in the trade, so I thought I'd post that.

I'd finished up the application process (I'll post something about that soon) and had gotten a call from the Apprentice Coordinator at the JATC to come down to the Hall. He had me an assignment. He called up my brand new company and told them I was on my way. I drove over to their shop and did the necessary paper work. I watched the safety video and got the name of my foreman. I called him up to find out where I was showing up the next day.

I walked into the hospital I would be working at early the next morning with brand new boots and a tool bag full of shiny new tools. I did some more paperwork for a hospital name tag and was given a hardhat. My foreman then took me into a nurses station and recovery area that was being renovated.

I had spent a few years fixing cars for a living so I had a pretty good idea how my new tools worked but I was walking into unknown territory. I knew just enough about the electrical trade to know that I knew nothing at all.

Honestly, it was all rather intimidating.

Once I got going, though, it was great. I spent the first few days pulling wire through conduit. (You'll do a lot of that when you start out.) Each day, though, I got to try something new. People explained things to me and I figured out my role.

In the six months since that day in August I've learned a ton - at boot camp, in class and on the job. I'm already a much more useful electrician's apprentice than I was that day. The time has flown by.

In my next few posts I'll try to talk a little bit about how I got into the JATC program and what school is like, but for now I'll leave this as my introduction.