Anyone else started school at 33 years old? I hope I'm not alone....

[UptonSinclair]

I am 44 year old licensed electrician who just finished my first Bachelor's degree. I wish I would have started college 20 years ago. Let me tell you a little about being an electrician. Unless you serve a formal apprenticeship, the pay sucks. I had over 15 years of experience as a maintenance electrician and made $18 an hour without benefits. I was trained in the Air Force so in many states I couldn't test for a license. Thankfully, after moving to Colorado things got better. I was able to test for my license and land a union job. I am now making more than I would make with most Master's degrees.

If you are interested in becoming an Electrician, go see your local IBEW and see if you can get into a formal apprenticeship.

While you are waiting to hear from the IBEW stay in college and work on your general education. Get lots of math and science. If the apprenticeship doesn't work out, you can study to become an electrical technician and do more complicated motor controls. This gets close to IT working with Programmable Logic Controllers, industrial networking, etc. Good technicians are hard to find and the work is a lot more interesting than the grunt work construction electricians do.

Be careful about focusing on the time it takes to get a degree. Worrying about the time has caused me to make a lot of bad choices with my education. There are very few online options that are better than your local community college.