After being at a four-year university for two years, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In the beginning, I had planned on becoming a nurse, but after taking a few advanced biology classes I realized it was unlikely that would work out. I talked to my mom and she mentioned coming home to be an ultrasound tech and my first thought was, “Well, isn’t that kind of taking the easy way out?” Then I got to thinking, why do I feel that way about people who went to a tech school? After all, they make about as much money as people with four year degrees.
Maybe the reason we think that these kinds of jobs are cop-outs is the emphasis our school system puts on college. In high school there was always a competition between my classmates for what colleges they got in to. For me, going out of state was never really an option, so getting into any fou year university other than the one right by my house was an accomplishment. My peers, on the other hand, were consistently flaunting their acceptances to Ole Miss, Alabama, Tennessee, pretty much any huge school you can think of. I already thought of myself as less because I couldn’t afford to go to a big, expensive, out-of-state school so thinking about leaving my four-year university for a trade school made me feel like even more of a failure.
Not only do people who go to tech school make just as much money, than those who have bachelor’s degrees, if not more, the trades they are studying are so much more important than any advertising job or desk job you could ever have. Welders, heating and air technicians, plumbers, electricians: These are all the people you call when something important in your house breaks.
The truth of the matter is that people who go to trade schools are just as important and educated as any four-year university grad. Of course, with a trade school, there is a relatively low cap as to how far you can go in the field because there are few advancement opportunities, but even with a business job nothing is guaranteed. There are so many advantages to trade schools and it’s not just the necessities. Since they only take about a year or two to complete, you always have time to go back to school, as well as something to fall back on and that’s a pretty amazing thing.
