Last weekend I met a union carpenter at a bar who urged me to try a women in trades program and then proceeded to drink me under the table.. with every jira ticket and meeting to plan another meeting and slack chatGPT screenshot the idea of just saying fuck it and becoming a journeyman electrician or something gets more and more appealing
@hannah Speaking partially from experience (like, a summer's worth) and partially second-hand, electrician work's not bad work. It can get real hot though. Also cold, but for me, the bigger problem is "real hot." I've only done residential, but running new wire through hundreds of beams in an uninsulated and unvented enclosed attic in summer isn't the worst job I've ever done by a damn sight, but it is the opposite of a good time.
@hannah Also, storytime: I was working a kitchen rewire while structural engineers were working in the same area of the building (though not the same room) and it was back-install of kitchen fixtures in new tile and they'd picked the smallest boxes allowed because of course they had and it was hot as fuck and I was having a Bad Day and the lead of the structural engineering team started laughing, so I looked over at him and said "What" and he said "Now I know you're a real electrician," and I was all "...why?" and he said "Because you swear like one. Nobody swears like electricians."
I hadn't even been aware I was swearing. And apparently, this is a thing, and electricians are the most sweary of the trades. xD
@hannah Small's not a problem. Small can be an advantage. When I was in grad school doing this I was like 5'4" and that means you can get your hands and body into places dudes - particularly big dudes - can't.
But yeah, you'd need to build some muscle. Not crazy amounts, but some. Enough to pull and haul wire.
(I had a big growth spurt after, ended up over 5'7", still don't know what's up with that.)
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