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g/apprentice • Posted by u/three_phase_phil •

Turned out journeyman this morning after five years. Some things I got wrong along the way. Milestone

Passed the practical and got the card today. Five years, two contractors, one very long stretch where I thought about quitting.

Things I got wrong that cost me time:

I was afraid of looking stupid, so I did not ask. Year one and two, I would rather guess and redo something than ask a question in front of the crew. I probably lost six months of learning to that. Nobody remembers the questions. Everybody remembers the guy who had to redo a whole ceiling.

I optimized for looking busy instead of learning. Carrying material and cleaning up is visible, safe, and teaches you nothing after the first month. The technical work is where you get better and it means being slow in front of people. Take the technical work.

I did not read the prints. I got told what to do and I did it. Two full years before I started reading the drawings for a job before showing up. Once I did, everything made more sense and I stopped being surprised.

I did not write anything down. Started keeping a notebook in year three. Should have started in week one. Every time I looked something up twice, it should have been in the notebook after the first time.

I thought the test was the hard part. The test is a week of stress. The five years are the hard part, and they are hard in a slow way that nobody warns you about — showing up in February, in the rain, on year three, when the card still feels theoretical.

To anyone in year two: it is supposed to feel like this. Keep going.

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u/admin_jake ADMIN •

Congratulations. Genuinely one of the better reflection posts this board has had.

The one about optimizing for looking busy is the one I would put in front of every first year. It is a completely rational thing to do — visible effort feels safer than visible incompetence — and it is the single biggest thing that separates a five year apprentice who can run work from one who cannot.

Take the job you are not sure you can do. Do it slowly. That is the whole thing.

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u/first_year_felix •

Year one here and the notebook thing is landing hard. I look things up on my phone constantly and it evaporates immediately. I have looked up the same conduit fill table probably fifteen times.

What goes in yours? Is it code stuff, or job stuff, or both?

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u/three_phase_phil OP •

Both, and the ratio surprised me.

Code stuff early — fill tables, box fill, common ampacities, the derating factors I kept forgetting. That is maybe the first twenty pages.

After that it became job stuff, and that turned out to be more valuable. Which supply house has what. The part number of the connector that actually fits that panel. What the inspector in this county always looks at first. Who to call at the POCO and what time they answer.

The code is in a book. The job stuff is nowhere and you will forget it.

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u/conduit_king •

The job-stuff notebook is what separates people who are useful in a specific area from people who are generically qualified. Twenty years in and mine is mostly phone numbers, part numbers, and which inspector cares about what.

That knowledge is not written down anywhere on earth and it is most of what a contractor is actually paying for.

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u/journeyman_hopeful •

Congratulations. I tested out eight months ago and the thing nobody told me is that the day after you get the card, you are the person who is supposed to know. That transition is abrupt and it is its own kind of hard.

Enjoy today though. You earned it.

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u/three_phase_phil OP •

I am already nervous about that part. There is a first year on my crew who has started asking me things and I keep having to fight the urge to say "I only just found out myself."

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u/nec_nerd •

Say it. "I do not know, let us look it up together" is the single most valuable sentence a new journeyman can learn, and modeling it for a first year is worth more than the answer.

The JWs who pretend to know are the ones who create the problems that show up on my inspections.

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u/trade_school_tina •

Saving this whole thread. Six months into HVAC school and "it is supposed to feel like this" is what I needed to read this week specifically.

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u/osha_omar •

Congratulations. One thing to carry forward: you now have the standing to stop work. Apprentices mostly do not feel like they can, and you were probably in situations in the last five years where you should have and did not.

Use it. That is part of the card too.

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