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PLUMBING CONNECTION
SPRING 2015
SHOULD I HAVE JUST GONE TO UNI?
P
erhaps, it hits you in the middle of winter when it’s
freezing cold and pouring rain – everyone else seems
to be juggling their café latte as they are rushing
to get into their warm, dry office and you’re scrambling to
reschedule work for the day so that you aren’t exposed to
the elements or sitting around with a team of workers doing
nothing.
Does anyone else ever feel like this, or is it just me?
Usually, when I feel like this, I talk to my office-based
mates – who mostly work for large corporations – and I
realise, the grass is not always greener. All jobs have their
positives, and in this day and age, the benefits of being
a licensed plumber in a world seemingly obsessed with
university degrees, are only increasing.
If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll be interested in what
former New York Mayor and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg
had to say to a Wall Street Trade Group in November last
year:
“Today if your kid wants to go to college or become a
plumber, you’ve got to think long and hard,” said Bloomberg
at the annual meeting of Wall Street trade group SIFMA.
“If he’s not going to go to a great school and he’s not super
smart academically, but is smart in terms of dealing with
people and that sort of thing, being a plumber is a great job
because you have pricing power, and you have an enormous
skill set.” The founder of financial data and news services
company Bloomberg L.P. even went as far as to say that
students considering Harvard should do the maths. “You
could pay $50,000 to $60,000 a year to Harvard or you
could make that much as an apprentice plumber,” he said.
(CNNMoney)
Many of my close friends are university-educated,
because when I was an apprentice I joined a major university
basketball team as a way to meet people my own age
and stay fit. It ended up giving me all the advantages of
a university ‘social and sporting life’, without needing to
attend the university. Most people probably don’t even
realise that you don’t always have to be enrolled at the
university to join the sporting teams. It was actually a pretty
good support network too, because while I was working and
studying during my apprentice years, so were my mates.
The only difference was that I had more money, because of
my earnings as an apprentice, and definitely more free time
to attend the social functions, compared to my friends who
were paying $1000-$3000 per subject at university, along
with other costs, and who always seemed stressed about
exams and assessments.
One year, I even ended up winning the ‘Party Animal of the
Year’ award due to my regular attendance at social events
– with most people not even realising I didn’t actually go to
university. So, did I miss out on anything? In the short-
term it didn’t seem like it and now, almost 25 years later,
my mates and I still hang out together and we all earn very
similar wages. In addition, I am the only one of my friends
who owns his own business.
Interestingly enough, many of my friends studied hard
and paid a lot of money for degrees that they never used.
Only two out of six of my close friends ever used their
qualifications for paid work, one is still an engineer and
the second used his chemical engineering skills at the
beginning of his career before swiftly moving into people
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED IF YOU SHOULD HAVE STUDIED HARDER AT SCHOOL AND GONE TO UNIVERSITY? OR
DO YOU EVER HAVE DAYS WHEN YOUR BACK IS ACHING AND YOU’VE BEEN COVERED IN SEWERAGE, AND THINK TO
YOURSELF, ‘I JUST WANT A DESK JOB?’
BRAD FALLON
SUGGESTS YOU RECONSIDER.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
BRAD FALLON