With my college degree basically doing nothing for me at this point, I have been thinking about going back to school and pursuing a trade. I was wondering what are some trades that you recommend?
With my college degree basically doing nothing for me at this point, I have been thinking about going back to school and pursuing a trade. I was wondering what are some trades that you recommend?
If you’re decent at math and physics and are even remotely handy, you can probably get into a data center or power plant. Both industries are growing like crazy while boomers and older Gen x are retiring.
It took a long while as a contractor, but I eventually got a job as an operator in a power plant. The rotating shift work can be rough, and some days are really demanding, but it’s overall not too bad usually and it pays well. Outside operators here start at like $40/hour. My water treatment specialty has gotten me a promotion and raises so now I’m at like $53.50/hour. If I can continue training and pass the test and board for it, I could make over $60/hour as a control room operator. With built-in OT and scheduled maintenance outages demanding even more OT, it’s impossible to not break $100k/year here. With bonus, I might break $150k this year.
Brush up on chiller loops, chemistry 101, physics 101, NATO phonetic alphabet, get 15k steps in a day, and change the oil in your car. If that’s pretty easy for you, there’s a career waiting for you lol.