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Electrician

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What to Expect

For electrician trainees, it's all about power -- both residential and commercial.

"There is a lot more to learn than I thought there would be, but it is a complete program," says Bob Lemings. "It doesn't do just residential or commercial or the basics....There is a lot more to it than most people realize."

Lemings, who took the electrician program at Louisiana Technical College, went back to school after working in construction. He says he found the program very challenging.

Lemings was generally in school from 8 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. and then often spent time after school going over reading material. Some of his classes included conduit bending, commercial wiring, motor controls and programmable logic circuits.

Lindy Basinski says she went into an industrial electrician and electronics engineering technology program because it seemed interesting, fun and financially promising.

Basinski says she was in classes at least five hours a day, with usually two hours spent on practical work. She studied circuit analysis, digital systems, calculus, distribution, residential electrical and controls.

As part of her apprenticeship with an electrical company, she did machine and panel building. She describes machine building as the mounting of electrical devices and the subsequent wiring, as well as connecting all panels wired during the panel build.

"The panel build is the same thing, but exclusively the panels will be wired to run the machines, which are then shipped to the location where the entire machine will be built and debugged before sale to the customer," she says.

How to Prepare

Although Lemings returned to school after 20 years on the workforce, he still has advice to offer high school students looking into this field of study. "The problem with kids coming out of high school is they have never worked, and they don't know you have to show up every day," he says.

"You have to be on time. These are things an employer will look for as well as an instructor of a class. You have to come in here wanting to learn. This isn't high school where someone is making you come."

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