My Ideal Apprenticeship

An apprenticeship is a contract between an employer and a (potentially) untrained individual. The common situation is one where the employer trains the apprentice to do the work required of workers in that field. The employee gets paid minimum wage.

I love the idea of apprenticeship because it enables you to learn elements of any business, at no cost to yourself, even getting paid! This is an equivalent (in my opinion) to getting paid to go to college! Some of the best benefits of an apprenticeship are …

• Hands on training. You aren’t just another kid in a classroom. Your boss gives you real attention in order to train and instruct you.
• You get paid to learn a trade. You could apprentice part-time in high school to earn money and learn.
• Real-world experience. As you interact with customers and employees, you will learn more about the market and what people are interested in, as well as learning to deal with different groups of people.
• Business training. As well as learning the hand-work, you learn about various aspects of managing a business, like doing taxes, hiring, paying, and firing employees, etc.

As you can see, I’m totally in love with the idea of an apprenticeship, and my ideal choice would be to apprentice in electrics or mechanics, for various reasons.

Benefits of apprenticing in Electrics:

• You could wire your own home.
• In my area, it’s a high-paying job.
• Everyone needs electric work done.
• You visit other people’s homes and learn to work on all kinds of systems and buildings.
• It requires physical labor, unlike a desk job.

Benefits of apprenticing in Mechanics:

• Depending on the area of mechanics you decide to study (airplane, auto, or farm machinery) you could use your skills on your own, your family’s, or your friends’ vehicles.
• Again, almost everyone has a vehicle. Auto mechanics are in high demand.
• Again, in my area, it’s a high-paying job.
• It often requires physical labor. No getting soft on this job either!

Additionally, in both of these apprenticeships lie the opportunity to become a fully-fledged electrician or mechanic.  As an electrician, I could start my own business, literally from scratch, since it only requires smaller sized tools. I would need a dependable vehicle to get me where I needed to go, since an electrician does quite a bit of traveling to other people’s homes.

Setting up shop as a mechanic would be a bit trickier and more expensive, since I would need a shop and heavier equipment. However, the majority of people would bring their cars to me, so that would cut down on my gas usage, saving a lot of money in the long run.

Notwithstanding the previous point, one way I could fill a hole in this market would be to travel TO a person’s house to fix their car. Not only would I be providing service, but I would be saving their time while showing them I cared enough to show up. This adds quality to service, and might get me more referrals.

Thank you all for reading!

~ Makayla

Advertisement