for you older gents, if you could go back.....

I'm heavy into my college career at the moment, majoring in psychology. As more and more days pass, I find myself hating the paperwork and the research, there's hardly and field work and very little mechanical elements (human factors/psych). With all the talk about schools like Wyotech, UTI, and McPherson, I'm once again leaning towards starting over in an automotive career. I keep feeling like I'll end up as a desk jockey who hates his job till the end of his days. So my question is, if you could go back, get the education, and get placed in the field, would you do it?

 

Do 20 in the service,retire and start drawing retirement from unc. sam at 38 start a new carear and get 2 cheaks!

 

let me be brief- stay in school! 48 year old... laid off for a year. career change. do you really want to get dirty every damm day? sweat to death in the summer? freeze in the winter? there is no shame in working for a living but as you are in this program, i am sure you are pretty smart. i think you would get bored with working on OTHER PEOPLES' cars. just my .02

 

I'd like to recommend two books:
"What Color is Your Parachute" and "Do What You Love; The Money Will Follow."

I once sold engine rebuilding equipment. The 21% interest rates on 1982 and 1983 drove me to look for something temporary to do. I've now been temporarily in the insurance and investment business for 21 years. I'm succesful enough to provide for my family and have my toys. But, there is not a day that goes by where I ask the waht if questions.

Buy and read these books before you change plans.

Just a dab of advice from one of the older guys.

 

I'd find a rich woman and marry her. Let her spoil me in a way that I could become accustom too.

 

i've been with the telephone company for over 30 years now. it's had its good times and its bad times. but the biggest thing was a steady check and BENEFITS. if you can find a job that has good benefits and you like the job, that's most of the battle. good luck.

 

Working in the automotive repair field can be very rewarding. Monetarily and personally. But it is not at all like the shows on TV, like American Rodder, Dreamcar Garage, Horsepower TV, etc. What it really gets down to is hustle your butt to get the car out of the shop so the owner can keep his $50.00 per hour a bay fee going. He and you will be in it for money. Cold in the winter, wet too. Hotter than hell in the summer, wet too with all the sweat. Then take into account that some of the customers, and it is daily, want to find ways to sue the owner operator. So you have to go over every car with a fine tooth comb and record all the blemishes on the paint, interior, glass and not to mention the miriad of things going on mechanically. Maybe you just added some transimission fluid for a real nice guy going on vacation. He comes back two weeks later and tells your boss you must have added the wrong type transmission fluid and he lost his transmission in Wyoming and his mother inlaw has a heat stroke waiting for the rollback. Oh yeah, the certified maniac driving the wrecker said the transmission fluid was waaaaaaaaaaay over full and smell like brake fluid and that must have been what you added. Ever gone home and drank yourself into a corner? You will after about 5 years of that crap. Maybe you could be a painter or autobody repairman, lots of bad chemicals and you are on oxygen before you are of retirement age. My advice is to find a profession that can fullful your economic goals first, secondly do something that can keep you sane. Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, the less people you have to deal with on a daily basis is proportionant to the amount of problems you will face daily. Whatever you decide, do stay with getting an education and remember, there are guys and gals out there busting their butt for minimum wage and will likely never get out of that rut, primarily due to the fact they are underqualified to go any further. If you still persist in the automotive field, it can be a great trainer for many other things. I am capable of diverse careers, and am not employed in the automotive field currenly, my choice about 5 years ago. But when I retire, am now 46, will semi-retire at 52, I hope to go back to painting cars. Best of luck to ya.
Dan

 

snake, if you like working on cars, let it be a hobby. that way you will still like it later. working on cars for someone else for a living would not be fun and games. you will be doing it the way they want it done, when they want it done and as soon as they want it done. they will want twice the work in half the time. the more you do a hour the more "they" make.
this is not true for all jobs but it is the norm for most in this day and age.
jocky a desk and then go home and work on your car. j.m.o.
p.s. i am a mechanic (22 years)...frank...

 

My sophomore year of college I wondered why the heck I was there. Stick it out...I am glad I did. You can't beat a good education. Looking back now...I am glad I stuck it out.

 

Dan couldn't have said it better!

Thanks for the words of experience, makes me feel that my line of work isn't all that bad. I deal with the same type customers every day, 8-9 hrs a day, people bitching & moaning because their lawn mowers or 4 wheelers are broken/not repaired/costs too much to repair, etc. I love working on stuff...but hate dealing with people like that. The ones that really chap my butt are the ones that are "more important" than anyone else that may have waited up to 2-3 weeks for backordered parts....and the ones that try to sue for a scratch or a "repeat" repair that actually had nothing to do with the original repair. Had one of those saturday...the guy brings in a 4 wheeler for us to clean the 2 year old gas out of his carburetor, yeah...we cleaned it, ran great. The guy bought it back saturday saying that we ruined his ignition coil. I didn't and still will not understand that one as we did not even touch anything in the area....but apparently he thinks that we did and proceded to make my day a not so great one by getting personal with his attitude. I hate to say it, but there are some customers that you want to just bust 'em in the nose to knock some sense into 'em, but ya can't do that either for fear of suing. I just told the guy I was sorry that he had another problem and walked away before my temper got the best of both of us.

I'm sure the guy will never be back...but so be it. He'll find someone else that will screw him over and he'll wish he'd not worn out his welcome at our shop. Dealing with that crap every day gets old....but just like anything else, you have to find ways to deal with it. Mine was to go sunday to the races & beat on my Mustang. Worked great!

 

My Dad...

...was a mechanic full-time in the National Guard for
30+ years. In the latter yrs. he was a shop foreman.
Despite that, he suffers from arthritis in his knees,
ankles and elbows. Most of that according to his
doctors is from pulling wrenches, walking on and
laying on concrete floors, pulling and lifting.

Now he resents any mechanical work due to his
physical inability to perform such work at 59 yrs.
old.
He retired and took another job in the same field
managing mechanics for a construction company.
He enjoys it, but knows that it is a career that has
ruined him physically.

Listen to a previous post, keep this as a hobby.
You will enjoy it more that way.

Seth

 

Having been an Auto Technician the better part of ten years now, I can honestly say it is a very demanding job. Constant training, having to buy new tools religously, it never stops. You are always on a time clock not to your benifet. It does not matter if you are flat rate, commision, or hourly. You always have to work non stop to keep up, if you are at a busy shop. If you are at a slow shop you will most likely starve. I spend on the average $200.00 a month to support my training and or tool habit. I have spent over 50K in tools and I am no where near equiped to fix every car, or take on every job. I do like the challenge of fixing automobiles. It is no longer a job for the highschool drop out loser. It takes great skill and intelligence to rise to the top ranks. Diagnostics on today's vehicles rivals NASA technology. Although it is a very dirty job, be prepared to always have grimy hands no matter how many times you wash them. I have used tons of different methods and I always have that grime stuck in the cracks and lines on my hands. It is a job where as you go you train yourself. If you need guidance on every job you will not make it. I still see stuff I have never done come in all the time. I for one always jump in head first and hope for the best. I have come across a few I could not fix but no one technician can fix them all. The pay has topped out and has actually decreased over the last 3 years. It will slowly but surely cripple you. I already have two bad knees, slipped disc in my back, and athritis starting in my hands. You will lose high frequency hearing from all the air tools. If I remember correctly the average life span of a mechanic is only 59 years old. If you like hard work and the challenge to fix things most poeple can't and do not mind spending a college educations worth of money on tools and training go for it. If I knew what I know now I would not have gotten into it. I loved it as a hobby and now I have a hard time even working on my hotrods cause I am car repair burnt out. In fact since I am only almost 27 after my wife gets out of college I might retire from this business and goto college myself. I know I just spent a bunch of space typing how bad it is but It does have its up sides. Learning to fix things will stay with you forever. The tools you buy will always bet there. However, the most important thing is you will have a skilled trade you can fall back on if all else fails. It is very hard to find good, qualified, dependable technicians.

 

Well I'm not old, but I'll throw in my two cents anyways. Hell I'm still trying to figure it out myself. I too can't stand the 9-5 deskjob, but I think it's a hell of a lot better than getting cancer or something else from breathing toxic chemicals. As you get older, you will want a job where you don't have to abuse your body every day. I'd agree that doing what you love is a good way to go, but you also need to think about money, the effect it would have on your body, and if you could stand doing it for the rest of your life. I like wrenching on stuff as a hobby, but I don't think I'd ever want to do it for a profession. Then again, I don't think I want to rot at a desk for the rest of my life either. There's middle ground out there, it's just hard to find. And you know man, even if you do get that psychology degree, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be working that field. Lots of times, it's hard to find work in a particular field, you may end up doing something completely different. But the key thing is, that degree can never be taken away from you. It's something you can put on a resume forever and it will continue to pay off until you retire. That degree will give you a big advantage when you try and get a job, even if it's not in your particular field of study, which often happens with majors like those.

 

I would have stayed with the go-cart racing when I was 9 and tried to do what I said back then...........
Quote as a 9 year old:
" I will be glad when I get to the Winston Cup so I can give Earnhardt the chrome horn!"

You just never know??????

 

Thanks for the advice guys, there are some really good points in here that I had never considered.