After much deliberation on whether to go for a bachelors degree or to pursue a trade, I decided to go with the latter and become an electrical lineman.

I'm 26 and have spent too much time fu**ing around in life and following pipe dreams, so now I'm doing something about it.

www.lineman.edu/

Northwest lineman college has multiple campuses, the one's I will choose between would be in Oroville, Ca or Meridian, Id. If I choose Oroville, I would have to wait until March to start. If I go with Idaho, I will be able to start in January. The course is 4 months long, live in campus, on site training etc and the employment rate right after completing the certification process is 85% where most of those people are making at least 50k a year. Experienced journeymen can top out at 300k a year. Opportunities to travel for work are ample and generally you can make much more if you are open to traveling, which I am. Tuition/tools are about 20k, and I will definitely be looking into loan options for this.

Basically my reasoning behind doing this as opposed to pursuing a bachelors degree is that I would have to waste 4 more years to start a career, where as if I go with the lineman trade it's only 4 months. Seems pretty obvious in a field where opportunities to work and make money are only going to grow with increase in population, higher demands for electricity and finding new ways to transmit more efficient energy sources.

I'm posting this because I feel writing it down and putting it out there will validate it more for me as an attainable goal. I have recently gone through some drastic life changes and writing down goals has become part a big part of changing my entire life around. I have success on my mind and feel that this will be a very easily attainable goal with hard work, focus and determination.

If anyone has any advice about the trade or knows anyone personally that has worked as an electrical lineman, all input would be appreciated. Just trying to find as much info and or personal experiences as possible. Also thoughts on trade/degree?

cliffs:

- going to get certified as an electrical lineman
- have to decide between 2 campuses
- trade vs degree??
- looking for personal stories from people who have worked as or know/knew working electrical linemen
- advice?

Thanks for reading

cool blog bro

I did an internship for an electric company a few summers ago. I rode around a few times with some line men. Seems like a pretty good job as long as you are careful and don't mind driving around/being outside

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s8x2efUY5c

Also meant to post this. Very cool vid of these guys at work.

GL OP

you should write a country song about it.

Obviously it would be a dangerous job, but that's where hard training and taking the job very seriously will make the difference between staying safe on the job and becoming one of those statistics.

Nah, I fu**in hate country.

I'll play devil's advocate. Disclaimer: I haven't clicked any of the links and really have no idea what a lineman does.

-Saying that you won't be one of the statistics because you're going to train hard and take the job seriously isn't being realistic. You're presumably going to be doing this job for 40 years. You're going to be going through the motions like every other person in the world who has to get up and do the same job every day for 40 years. If it's a dangerous job, it's a dangerous job. You won't be any less likely to be hurt than the other linemen. They trained too.

-What are the chances that 20 years down the road, the need for linemen significantly decreases because of advances in technology? I have no idea about this, but it would suck hard to be in your 40s looking for a new trade without an education.

i'd try getting used to it if i were you - i'd imagine you'll be hearing that joke a lot.

AINEC

I took a class at a trade school for solar. They also had a lineman's class going at the campus. In the relatively short time I was there, there was an accident with a guy falling down a pole. Be careful.

Definitely see what you are saying. It obviously is a dangerous job and that has definitely been considered. It's called an accident for a reason, it's not planned and unwanted. But this can also be said about many other jobs and even then outside of working in real life. You could die walking across the street. Odds are that it wont happen, but there is always that possibility.

The same could also be said about any other job in regards to your second statement. Say you go to school for 4 years to become a computer system analyst. But 5 years out of school, programs are created to monitor every aspect of a computer network, eliminating the need for humans to do the job. It could happen in many fields of work.

Appreciate the input.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't get it.

come to ct

Connecticut? What is there? Never been to east coast.

lol

192,000 w/o power for a week now

Damn, what from? Weather?

I still have to complete the certification school, so it wont be for at least 6 months.

Get in there and fix those lines now and they'll make you an honorary lineman and you won't have to take the classes.

yes, we had over 6 inches of wet snowfall last Saturday and that caused falling tree limbs all over the state with ~800,000 outages at its peak (it affected the tri state area over 2.5 million outages), truly a disaster in the state. So some people will now go for over 7 days without power.

Damn dude, hope your not part of that. Good luck.

Seeing the trucks from all over the country pour into central Arkansas for the huge ice storm in the late 90's and some pretty massive tornado's was a great sight and huge relief. Not having power for 7 days lets you know how vulnerable (spoiled?) we are. They also staged here for going down into the coast after the hurricanes. Like an army, and highly appreciated.

Lol Connecticut. They can't get any outside workers to help fix the lines because cl&p never paid them for helping after hurricane Irene.

Are you going to be a lineman for the county?