 Hello, my name is Shavina Baker and I am the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Educator for the NIU Illinois CTE project team. And today we are joined with Michelle Carlson, who is an electrician. As you all know, we have been doing a trailhead series that really amplifies and highlights individuals from industry. In partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education, I have Michelle here today to talk to us just a little bit about her career path and how she got into being an electrician. So, Michelle, can you tell us a little bit about your job and what makes you excited about it? Hi, Shavina. Well, my job is in UAW Industrial Electrician and I'm a journeyman, which took me four years in schooling to do that. What excites me about it is that every day I learn something new. There's something different that comes up every day. It's always learning. It's a learning process. There's many different facets that I work with. When people think of an electrician, they think, oh, you know, you're pulling wires or replacing breakers. As an industrial electrician, it's not always that. We deal with computers. We deal with robots. We manually move robots. We repair robots. We diagnose robots. We deal with ladder logic, which all industries controls the assembly line, controls all the equipment. It's a computer program, very interesting to learn. We read blueprints. Every day there's something different. There's vision on these robots. And you learn the vision. You dial in the vision. You learn too much in depth to even go through all of it. So I'd like to say as my background, this is not where I started. Okay. I'm a married mom. I have a three-year-old granddaughter. So I'm giving up their close retirement age here. But this isn't where I started. 30-plus years ago, 30-plus years ago, I started out working in automotive repair shops. Started out answering the phones. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I always took an interest. I used to watch my dad work on the car. Eventually I started working in the repair shops. So I learned a lot doing break jobs, doing tune-ups. So that's kind of where I started. I then, of course, had my daughter. I got in full-time at Chrysler. So I started working at Chrysler on the line. I had an opportunity come up and I had someone ask me, you should apply for this opportunity. It was called jitney repair. In jitney repair, they service all the forklifts, all the propane vehicles. There's many different facets of that. Also, you're dealing with electrical, powered industrial vehicles. You're dealing with gasoline-powered and powered vehicles, propane-powered vehicles. I thought, yeah, I got higher mean. I don't have a degree. I don't have certifications and I'm a woman, right? This is 1995. Nobody wants a woman in an all-male shop. Well, guess what? I got hired. I got hired because of my experience before that. I went in as what's called an operator, where I wasn't a journeyman, but I had the experience to back me up. I was able to work in there, doing that alongside with the males. I'd learned a lot in there. Every day I learned something new. I'd never worked on forklifts before, you know what? And so I'm still learning in there. I was the first female in the Chrysler Corporation to be an operator in jitney repair. I was very proud of myself for that. Unfortunately, as we know in the auto industries, there's ups and downs and there were shift cuts. So, my job got cut and I had to go back to repair line, or to the automotive line. I ended up working in repair on the automotive line for four years as a repairman. A lot of men didn't want me in there until they saw that I held my own, right? As a woman, I feel that we should be given a chance. We should be able to be ourselves. There's lots of things that I've learned along the way that I might not have the strength in my arms to break loose a bolt or a nut. But I found that if I put a little breaker bar on the end of my ratchet, I have leverage and I can break it loose and tighten it up just as good as any man can. There's always ways to work around any type of difference that I might have physically between myself and a male. There are other women in the skilled trees. There are not a lot. As of course, Chrysler is idled right now, but as we were progressing, there were more women coming in as apprentices, as electrician apprentices, as pipe fitter apprentices. I really liked seeing that and these women were holding their phone. It's very, sometimes very scary and nervous. Absolutely. But once you get in there and you do it, you can learn just as much as anybody else can and then you can adapt and make adaptive tools to do the physical part. There were times that my size was an advantage going in there. Sometimes they'd be like, bring Michelle over here. We can't fit our hands in there. Otherwise, we'd have to take everything apart and I would be able to fit my hands in there and make the adjustments which saved us time on doing the job because my hands are a little smaller than the guy's hands. So it worked to your advantage. Yes, yes, yes. So Michelle, could you tell us for the students that will be watching this video what a journeyman is? What is that job entail? Well, a journeyman. I am a UAW journeyman. There's a difference between a UAW journeyman and an IBEW journeyman. These are the union journeyman positions. For me, I had to do over 8300 hours of on-the-job training and then also classroom training combined. I took classes like about electrical motors, PLCs, control circuits, hydraulics and pneumatics. I learned stuff of other trades also so I could diagnosis my trade or their trade. It generally takes four years for a UAW apprentice to become a journeyman. There are times when Chrysler would hire electricians from outside of our company. If they had eight years of documented experience in the trade, they were able to apply for a journeyman UAW card. So the IBEW union takes apprentices. Their schooling and on-the-job training is usually a five-year program whereas ours was four. And where did you take those classes, Michelle? So the classes that I took, I took at Rock Valley College. I took an apprentice coordinator that worked with the college and set up classes for us that were approved by our international to be acceptable. Our classes though were the industrial electrical engineering courses through the college. Right now I'm actually, I'm only three classes shy of actually getting a certificate or a degree in an electrical engineering. I just have to go back and finish those few classes. That's amazing. That is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that information. For people who are watching, could you talk about what advice you would give someone who is interested in being an electrician? Well, if you're interested in being an electrician, I would say follow through with it. Like I said, there's so many facets. Don't be afraid that, well, I'll just be pulling wires every day or I might, you know, high voltage, you get trained. You get trained on safety. Safety is number one. That's the number one thing that we would do when we come in is make sure we had all our safety gear on. Everything was done safely. Don't be afraid of it. Daily, if it has a, if you have a passion for it, find a class that interests you in it. There's, there's plenty of classes. I found some classes online. I watched YouTube videos actually on a fan of robots. I'm interested in that. They're showing how to run them, how to diagnose a repair on them, how to program them. If you find another student, look some of the stuff up, maybe take a, maybe take a class at your community college just to see it. This is something that interests me. Talk to a local IDW union, see if they're taking apprenticeships. To me, an apprenticeship is a great way to go through this, because first of all, you get paid to do the apprenticeship. You are paid an hourly wage to learn. You are paid to go to school. They pay for your school. You have no college debt when you are done. And when you are done, you are making a great wage after that. Not also to mention almost everywhere there's such great benefits, the health insurance benefits and all that. Currently, with Chrysler being idle, I am taking a retirement package. I put my resume online. I have recruiters contacting me all the time. I'm actually starting a new job on Monday. I will be considered a technical operations specialist. Congratulations. Thank you. I interviewed for the job and we had talked about my day to day and the different facets of what we worked on. Now, a lot of the stuff that I'm going in to this new company to work on, I've never worked on before. I've never seen it before. So again, I'm going to get trained on the job and get paid for it. You just have to have the fundamentals. Don't be afraid of math. I know a lot of apprentices when we went through this. We had to take trigonometry. We had to take algebra. Don't be afraid of it though. Go with it. There's always resources when you're taking these classes that there's resources with tutoring. There's online videos to show a different way to possibly do it. Never be afraid. If you have a passion for it, dig into it. I didn't start out as an electrician. I just knew that I had a passion that I like to get my hands in there and work on things. I like to diagnose and troubleshoot. I feel really accomplished, even sometimes with the smallest things. When I go home, I just had this great feeling like I learned something new. I was able to trace this back. I learned that this component, even though it's supposed to have a lifetime of a thousand hours, this one only had a lifetime of $800. Just stuff like that. It's always something new. I can absolutely appreciate all of what you are saying, and I appreciate you sharing that with us. So when we are talking to students about their career pathways, we like to encourage them to find out what their passions are, which is what you spoke about. Were there any classes that you had in high school that you took that prepared you to become an industrial electrician or any hands-on learning that you experienced? So when I was in high school, now this is back a long time ago in the 80s. I had taken a mechanical drawing class, actually, and I liked it. I found I liked it. And this is back when nowadays you do it on the computer with a program. This was back with the pencil and the rulers. I enjoyed that. I did enjoy math classes, algebra. I never did take trigonometry or anything in high school. Basically, when I was in high school, my favorite class was typing. I had a two-hour secretarial class. That's what girls back then were geared for. So when talking to my counselors, that was one of the career paths that was mentioned to me was I should go to technical school and become a secretary. That's not really what I wanted to do. And this was before we did not have computers. Computers were just starting to come out. When I was in high school, I am dating myself right now, but computers weren't there either. And so I really didn't want to become a secretary. And so I thought I'm going to take a year between high school and then think about college. I'm going to take a year. I'm going to work some part-time jobs just to get out there. And like I said, it started. I took a part-time job. It was a repair shop slash towing company slash service station. And I started out working at the counter and answering phones. And I just, I love to go back in the shop. I'd watch the guys when it wasn't busy working on the cars, I'd ask questions. And eventually I got a chance to start helping out, training and doing that. And that's when I knew that I don't want to go to college unless it's a technical trade. I like working with my hands part of it. Awesome. So what are the most important skills that you need to be an industrial electrician? And what I mean by skills is we have students who are, you know, preparing for whatever career pathway that they're going to go into. And there are technical competencies that they need to learn in regards to their career pathway, but there are also essential skills that they need to learn. So an example would be communication, being organized, being a good team player. What are some of the essential skills that you think that an industrial electrician would need? So I found some of the skills, like you said, teamwork, time management. I really, I found I had to do a lot of time management between my on the job training, going to school. I had duties I had to take care of at home, of course. Before this there used to be games I would play on my phone or I'd look at Facebook. I deleted all of that off my phone. And I did my time management. I knew that from, you know, this block of time every day I needed to do homework on weekends. I don't need it to be mode. I did not. What was your own? I got a mode because I knew that homework time was after that I tried to stay scheduled with all that. I feel you have to want to dig into problem solving. A lot of people wanted to answer just given to them. As an electrician, you have to dig and find the answer and don't give up. There's a lot of people that give up too quickly just want the answer given to them. I find it very fulfilling. It's tough to have to dig deep and it's frustrating when you think you find the answer and that's not it, but it's very fulfilling once you do. I think it is a good thing to have. Learn how to use tools. Learn how to use them properly. Learn how to use any type of safety gear. Computer knowledge. Computers are good to know. Like I said, there weren't computers when I was in high school. Back, I want to say in 2005, just for fun, I took a class at Rock Valley College intro to computers. I learned so much. I was behind the times because I'm older and my child could out with me on a computer, my 13-year-old. So don't be afraid of computers. Don't be afraid to get dirty. There are many days that I would go home full of grease, full of dirt, but it's part of the job. An electrician also, if you have a fear of heights, it might not be a good thing to follow into the electrician part of it. Maybe into a technical part, working with the computer part of it. Electricians a lot of times can be 30 feet up in the air on scissor lifts or genie booms. You can be on a 12-foot ladder. I learned how to carry a 6-foot ladder in one arm and a tool bag in another because I'm on a ladder a lot. That's pretty much a lot of it. Awesome. And what advice would you give to young girls who are interested in being an electrician? What advice would you give them since that is traditionally a non-traditional career pathway? Don't be afraid. If this is what you want to do, follow your passion. A lot of girls, even I talked to that never got into the electrician career at Chrysler said they wanted to, but they were too afraid because they were a girl. And that's not true. You have just as much up here as any guy has. There is adaptive tools that will help you do the same things with the same strength needed as any guy does. Like I said, getting on lifts and ladders, we had an apprentice that I think she was about 5-foot-2 and I want to say maybe weighed about 100 pounds. Guess what? They make harnesses for her size. She made sure that if there was something she couldn't do or reach, there was a tool made that helped her do it. Anything is possible. Don't be afraid. Take some classes. Watch the videos online. I actually on TikTok, I follow a lot of women electricians, young women. Yes. And I love watching their videos. And sometimes the guys actually I found will not be guys around us women. A lot of them are polite and courteous. You know, sometimes you'll see the guys doing guy talk and it can get rough. Sometimes you have to have a little thick skin and just walk by and ignore them. But for the most part, all the men I've worked with have been polite, courteous. They watch their language. I have not had any problems. And a lot of girls and women are afraid that that's might be what they run into. But sometimes out of 10, it's not. If you've had an extensive career, Michelle, I am interested to find out how do you celebrate your successes? I wouldn't say I celebrate. Well, I guess I could say I celebrate, but I just come home and I feel great about it. I love talking to my husband about it because he takes pride that I do this. He is my biggest supporter and biggest encourager. He likes to whenever I do accomplish something, he'll be like, let's go out for dinner tonight and celebrate stuff like that. But I like to actually, when I do have a success is share it with others. If I learn something, I'm going to teach somebody else the same thing. You know, this is what I learned today in, you know, this is how we fixed it so that others can learn from what I've also learned. And how about the failures? How do you recover? So I take my failures tough. I beat myself up. The wheels are constantly turning. I'm the most critical person on myself more than anybody else is. But I learned to let it go, learn from it. So that same mistake doesn't get made again. When I became a journeyman, so once I became a journeyman, I was on my own and I was scared and I was nervous because I'm thinking, I don't know everything. So there's, there were people with 20 and 25 years that came up to me as electricians and they said, don't be afraid, I don't know everything either. And I learned something new every day also. So that that really helped. Like I said, I'm harder on myself than anybody else is on me. Like I said, I try to learn from my failure and mistake, get over that hump, go back in the next day with a gum ho attitude and let's do this. And as we close out Michelle, are there some hidden things about your job that many may not know about? Well, I explained a lot of it as far as the different, there's different facets. When I, when I first went into this job, took this operator apprenticeship by passing apprenticeship test took this the very first day with my journeyman. He says, come on, let's go. And we had to climb this ladder and do a basket 25 feet up in the air carriers zooming around, trying to actually get to get on a ladder up there, trying to adjust a control. And I thought, I didn't know electricians had to go up here. I thought we just walked around with our meters and we changed out light switches and so I did not know that I walked in learning that it's not just changing out light switches and outlets. It's, it's learning so many more different things. And like I said, as I found, once I put my resume online, I've gotten different opportunities to use the different facets from different companies, because not every electrician is going to be working with PLCs. Not every electrician is going to be working with robots. There's so many different facets to being an electrician. Well, all of that information is absolutely amazing and I have learned something myself because I didn't know that you could possibly be 2530 feet in the air so and I am absolutely afraid of heights. I appreciate you taking the time this afternoon to speak with me about your amazing career. I also appreciate the fact that you were very open and honest about sharing what it means to you that this is a non traditional career pathway but that absolutely anyone can excel in this career pathway. So I appreciate your time this afternoon and I wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors. Well, thank you Shreena thank you and I appreciate the opportunity for me to tell my story. I want to encourage anyone that has a passion for those to do this. Right now there's a lot of retirements in the trades. It's a great career path to take it that's what somebody wants to do. So if you walk out of this as if you take an apprenticeship with no debt is so nice. Well thank you Michelle.