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.