Looking for experience and money.

[~not]

Hi, at the moment I am studying at a community college. Hoping on finishing transferable units on a civ/meche program and then transferring to some university. But, at the moment I need a job. Is it possible to get an apprenticeship with some company or is that wishful thinking? What do you recommend doing? Thank a lot for any advice.

 

[daveyrocket]

Sure it's possible. I'd recommend putting together a resume, talking with the career counselors at your college, and applying for jobs.

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

If you are lacking for money, you might consider doing what I did: Go to work full time and go to school part time. Try to find work in the field you're studying.

I got a job as a telecommunications technician. I studied electrical engineering at night. By day I was doing things such as adjusting Microwave FM transmitter deviation by looking for the carrier Null of a reference test tone on a spectrum analyzer. I found the Bessel Null equation and then tried it on mobile radio transceivers. I scaled it so that could work there too. We used that for adjusting our test equipment to give us consistent deviation for setting up voter receivers.

By the time I got to studying signals and systems, I had a very practical, hands on experience that no school could match. Signals and Systems class, which was a real wash out course for most electrical engineering students, was comprehensible, though still not exactly easy.

Many utilities are looking for engineers as the older staff retire. The baby boom is eligible to retire and many who are in engineering positions are from the Baby Boom era. Look for internships that might be converted to become full time work.

Industry itself has begun to realize that without a diversity of ages and some form of mentoring by older staff to younger staff, bad things will happen. Yet our company continues to attempt filling open positions with older experience people from other places. At some point this will be very counterproductive. You happen to be in a very good position to bargain --if you take the time to talk to people, find out who is hiring, and where.

The only downside to the way I did things: It took twice as long to get my undergraduate degree. I wanted only to be an engineer. For most engineering positions, a Bachelor's degree is adequate. In some fields, such as Civil Engineering, a Masters might get you a bit further along, but you can nearly as well, if not better, by taking the EIT and then getting the PE certification a few years later.

Good Luck!