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Before I decided to shove my foot into the mechanic field, I was in school for engineering. I quit half way through my senior year because I hated the field. I worked as an engineer, and that added to the sour taste schooling gave me.
So I’m grabbing my ankles on student loans already, and I honestly don’t feel like adding more for a community college degree, classes, certificate what ever have you.
I’ve talked to a lot of techs, and literally 50% say go to school, the other 50% say climb up the A-techs ass every chance you get and learn on the job.
I want to know what you guys think?
If I don’t do school I think I’ll check out books from the local library and study as much stuff as I can to get a good basic foundation to build off of.
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Climbing up the A-tech’s ass is a crap shoot. I’ve seen enough idjits through my shop that I refuse to invest my time teaching them anything. Even for the rare exceptions, there may not be a reasonable amount of time in a shift to be the mentor. The dynamic of every shop is different, so you may never find that A-tech willing to give you his time. Maybe there’s enough business in & the door, they just dont’ have the time to give. An A-tech might indeed be a good tech, but a lousy teacher. A dealer garage will give you plenty of opportunities to get good at pattern failures, but may not diversify you to all cars like a good school will do for you.
I can see where school is frustrating, because you’ll spend a few days in the class room getting overloaded with information before you ever get to apply any of it in a lab or a shop. I know it was tough for me to remember & apply all that info after lecture time. The other problem is you’ve got one teacher trying to educate 20-30 students. It’s tough for any good teacher to be able to dole out individual attention where it’s needed. Out of those 20-30 students, there’s a lot of idjits that I won’t give my time to that are making it a bear for that teacher to help those students out that actually belong in this field.
Personally, I think you’re going to need both schooling and a good mentor in the work place. The trick is finding a good school with good teachers. Then finding that good shop with a good mentor and management that’s going to help you grow with the job. The technology keeps changing so you’re going to have to accept the idea you’re going to be a life long learner anyway.
Exactly what No_common_sense said. School + a good mentor + a good shop that will help you grow. School is not over rated it will make a huge difference that is if you apply yourself and do not goof off. You are going to be surrounded by idgits, spoiled kids, and backyard mechanics. Pay attention to the teacher and ignore everyone else. You have to realize the top of your class is your real competition and those are the people you want to talk to and get notes from. learn as much as you can and write down just about everything. Ask questions if you don’t know. This goes for school and work. It is better to ask before you fuck something up and it is better to ask for a different explanation if you do not understand it. If you still don’t understand it ask another person who might be able to explain it better to you. This is where I am at is in a spot exactly like no_common_sense said and the only reason I am there is because I was the top of my class and the middle of my manufacturer training class so I got to choose pretty much where I worked. This is what you want because you are going to need to choose to get the place that is not only going to be a good company but, one that has a mentor and is willing to tech. I am 2.5yrs in and i don’t know shit compared to the people around me and they teach me new things all day every day and have no problem teaching me. I am not saying I am not learning a whole lot I am there is just a ton more then you ever thought to learn. I am sill the slowest in the shop but, my efficiency is around 90% simply because we all work together and help one another and also they are willing to teach.
As for the loans part I feel you I shell out 400 a month in loans between college and UTI. It sucks and its a pain in the ass but, the knowledge I have separates me from every other entry level technician. I do diag every day whether it is hvac, electrical and/or after treatment. That doesn’t count what I spend every month on tools which is 160-200 a month. I pretty much am stuck eating hotdogs, home made hamburgers, pasta, tuna, pb sandwiches and frozen vegetables. But, without the schooling and manufacturer training I would be making 8 dollars less an hour. I wouldn’t have a contract (manufacturer specific training). I would have to spend hours a day doing online training to get to the level of manufacturer training I am at. That then sets doing your ASE’s back at least 3-4 years. If you go to school best bet is to do ASE tests as you learn that subject in school aka study the book in your free time. It will make you a lot more valuable. Also with school most companies say 1yr of school = 1yr of work experience. The other thing is with school it counts towards your ASE’s some of which you cannot get without 2 years experience.
In my opinion….On the positive part, the above post is very good advice plus more school. The negative part…. tool investment, eating and sleeping with your job until you retire or can’t do it anymore.
I feel I was blessed to make it 38 years until I was forced out. The people I went to school with didn’t even come close to that.
I’m a hobbyist turned pro with no education after high school and it’s been almost 10 years since moving all my tools away from home. I can absolutely say that I’m successful and have been in a position to be teaching people I work with for the most of that time. I’ve been fortunate where I’ve been the last 4 years to work next to a really exceptional tech who I’ve learned many things from, after the job before that where I was the senior guy and nobody to turn to if I was stumped.
I don’t think going to school is a waste but I think my alternative route worked out a lot better compared to all the guys I’ve worked with who did. To be fair though, I’ve hardly worked with anybody who didn’t go to school and none of the uneducated people I have worked with were successful. Even though I didn’t go to school I still spent all the money to learn enough that I could talk my way in and then walk the walk. I would never tell anybody that there’s a way around investing a lot of time and money either way.
I got into working on cars when I got my first car with the attitude that if I didn’t learn to do all the work on my car myself, I would be taken advantage of or at the very least pay too much when having it inevitably have to be fixed. I had lived with the same attitude about my computers growing up and it only seemed logical to apply the attitude to car ownership. I immediately bought a jack, jack stands, a Craftsman 219pc mechanics tool set, and “borrowed” the Automotive Technology book in the picture from my high school and read it over and over in my spare time until I needed to expand on the knowledge in that book.
From there, I bought a car I turned out to love and invented every excuse to work on it I could. I would orchestrate big maintenance/upkeep projects on it almost like a lab class or homework. Then I started trying to modify it to test the performance/tuning knowledge I started getting into. I usually never got that stuff right the first time and ended up doing those kinds of projects over again once or twice and thus learning even more. When I would plan a job, I would figure how much labor it would cost vs. the cost of buying whatever new tools needed to do it myself and it never made sense financially to pay for work from that perspective. 6 years of that and I had a hell of a car and a ton of experience and tools to show for it. I still have the car and I’ve only done maintenance/upkeep on it at work over the last 8 years or so.
It cost me about 15 grand on the car and parts, about 5 G’s in tools and equipment, under $1000 in books, and 5 years of doing nearly nothing else with my spare time but work on the car and study books to learn a better version of going to school. YouTube and much of internet help didn’t exist yet and I had no mentor, so it was a lot of trial and error and a lot of breakdowns and flat towing whenever I screwed something up. I don’t believe that there is a shortcut to school, just a different way. Either way, you have to take it very seriously to get near the top.
These are my books:
The book smarts are out there for a fraction of the cost of school. The real key is being the kind of person who can teach yourself and test yourself, sacrificing more ‘normal’ ways of spending your time in the process.
Another thing MDK22 just reminded me of is that ASE study guides are really good for setting yourself up a curriculum without school to tell you what you need to learn. I bought them from a Mac Tools guy that came to a dealer I worked at as a parts guy in 01-03 so I knew what I needed to learn since I wanted to consider myself properly educated.
Delmar makes incredible ASE books. They don’t have any stories etc just straight information with a few tricks here and there.
Can I say both answers are correct? On the one hand it will give you a good basic knowledge of every system and how things generally work. On the other hand the most important thing, in my opinion, is being able to properly diagnose an issue. Which they can’t really teach you in school.
[quote=”DaFirnz” post=119234]On the other hand the most important thing, in my opinion, is being able to properly diagnose an issue. Which they can’t really teach you in school.[/quote]
You went to the wrong school then.
no_common_sense No one ever explained it like you just did. That makes so much sense. After reading that I definitely think school is a route I need to take.
MDK22 thank you for the input. I feel your pain. I think between student loans, tools, and entry level pay I’ll be living on tuna for several years lol. You guys have really opened my eyes to how important school is. I really appreciate it.
JTF 38 years? I bet you’ve seen and done just about everything. I wish I had your knowledge. Even a small portion of it. I would be so far ahead of the curve! Thanks for the input.
Fopeano thanks for sharing that bro. What you did was my idea if I didn’t go through school. I appreciate you telling me about that.
You guys have definitely opened my eyes to the importance of school. And saved me a ton of heart ache. Thank you guys so much!!
Only had a couple of local choices. A local “oil change” school and the community college. Went to the latter, never taught a damn thing about how to diagnose clunks or whatnot in a front end for example. It’s likely the same school that 90% of the techs in my province went to.
Not really surprised a private school has a better curriculum. Maybe that’s why the apprenticeship system up here is so screwed for all trades.
Dafirnz you do what you can with the options you have. We have no diesel mechanic schools in my area. So if I wanted to be a diesel mech I would be screwed. You have my respect for working and making your last get better.
UTI offers housing assistance, car pool assistance, job assistance, and grant/scholarship/loan assistance. So you might have to work a part time job to pay while in school for your housing and take out a bigger loan but, it can be done. Is it easy, no. It can either be hard now and if you truly work you ass off in school it will pay off later. They have various programs for manufacturer training which take more time and cost a little more money but, often pay off big.
You can do what you want I just love this wrenching/diag and knew I wanted to do it for a living. I also worked my ass off for 2 years to get the job I have and have spent another 2 researching tools before I buy them and learning as much as I can whether it be from Eric the car guy, Scanner Danner, and the countless others on youtube. All while starting to study my ASEs this is my passion and I am a very driven person when I put my mind to something.
Pitt,
Thank you for what you said. Believe me in the trade I was in, if anyone says anything nice you take what you can get. Thank you again!
As for as knowledge;it’s mostly GM and some Ford. I think if all of us on this forum would set down and talk or even worked together you would find out I would be on the short end of it all. The people on this forum ;educated /self educated in my opinion are very knowledgeable people and I have learned very much from them myself.
From my own personal experience, even if you attend school and graduate, you still will have to climb the shop ladder to get to A or B tech land. I have seen guys from two different tech schools in my area, as well as UTI in AZ, and of all those guys, only two have shown potential. Both of those guys are doing entry level work with the occasional job thrown at them with time on it. The rest of the guys who went thru school, wasted much money on school and need to go to work at walmart. School does not teach you common sense, that falls on you. It also won’t really teach you work ethic, you have it, you don’t or you figure it out. In all cases, no one actually knew how to diagnose anything, or it was seriously lacking. That’s where I have had to do the most mentoring of the two guys with potential. With all the guys I had to deal with, electrical was by far the weakest area. Not sure if these areas(electrical theory and diagnostic theory) are poorly taught at all three schools, or if the students just had a hard time grasping it. I cut my teeth first doing assembly line work for a lawn equip. manufacturer, and then did time with Jiffy Lube. From there, I got into the repair industry by accident, and fate or destiny. I never did school, so that left a lot more disposable income to go to tooling. You have to look at it with a business owner’s mindset, in that you must invest in your operation(you). I never settled with knowing enough, I constantly assessed my weak areas and improved them to where they were my strongest areas. I still do to this day. Not everyone can go it the way I did however. Attitude plays a major factor in how you do. I have two young guys(kids to me, lol) that work beside me, one on each side. One of them went to a trade school in a neighboring metro area, and is coming along. His main restrictions are of some personal legal issues that hold him back. The other, he brags to having three degrees, went to school for 7 years and just started working his first job in his life 5 months ago. He lives at home, pays no rent, and has no drive. One of his degrees is in welding, with another in auto repair. He is known as the whiner in the shop, the entitlement guy. He thinks he is ready for primetime, and wants to be let loose to do engine and trans work, areas he “specialized” in. He has left lug nuts loose, missed blatantly cracked drive belts and puking water pumps on his inspections, etc when doing LOF’s. He is the first to cry about things, and first to be sitting down(he’s straight hourly). He won’t go anywhere until or if he changes his attitude and work ethic. Don’t be that guy, that’s my point to the rambling. From there, if you have a good grasp of how vehicles work, you could dive in and start at the bottom and study and watch when you can, or you can go to school, learn as well as you try, and go that route. Don’t go into debt insanely with tools. Start out with cheaper tools and upgrade as money allows.
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