Checking Out Vocational Trade Schools in Your Area

Vocational trades schools have become very valuable nowadays. More and more people seem to prefer them to taking four-year degree courses. Most businesses and companies today have increasingly relied on vocational trade schools to provide them with a workforce with the special skills that their business need. Most businesses today consider having an employee with vocational training to handle specialized jobs that not everyone are qualified to handle.

If you plan to enter a vocational trade school in your area, you should be able to make sure of what type of profession you want to get into. Different vocational trade schools offer different training modules aimed to prepare and arm a student with a special set of skills for a certain kind of profession. After you do, you also need to check out the vocational trade schools that you wish to enroll in.

Before you decide on one vocational trade school to enroll in try to compare programs that the different schools in your area offer. Get the information that you need from these various schools and learn what they have to offer. Try to find out as much as you can about the facilities of the different vocational trade schools and see if they are adequate enough to answer their students’ needs.

Ask about the types of equipment such as computers and tools that they have that are used for training. Learn about the supplies and tools that the students themselves must provide during the course of the training. Try to visit the school when you can to see firsthand the condition of the classrooms and workshops used by the students.

If you are concerned about the quality of training given at the different vocational trade schools in your area, get some idea of the program’s success rate for each of the school. Ask what percentage of students is able to complete the program. A school with a high dropout rate could mean that students may not like the program or the training being given. Try also to know if training credits earned are transferable to other schools or colleges.

This might prove useful in case you wish to pursue your education later on. Knowing that your training has transferable credits, you may be able to lessen your time spent on advancing your future studies. If most of the reputable schools and colleges in your area say they don’t, it may be a sign that the vocational school in question is not well regarded by the other institutions.

Low Jeremy has been a hobbyist writer for the past 3 years. D

Trying to Sell Vocational Trade School to a Video Game Player

My son is not a big fan of our fire pit. When he was a little kid, he used to love it. I would tell him all kinds of scary stories as the only noises to be heard were crickets and the crackling fire. Those crackles would make his skin jump at times. Now, something else makes his skin jump. Since he’s just about to graduate high school, he knows he’s going to be hearing – not listening – to a lot of advice from me. This is especially the case since I recently heard what he wants to do for a living. Believe it or not, he wants to be a video game player. No, this is not a joke. There are actually people who play video games for pay, to see what works and does not work in the game. They also rate how enjoyable and playable the game is. This might be a good gig for a few years, but since it pays by the hour – and not very much – it doesn’t seem like a long-term option.

This is a difficult spot for me. As a kid, I told my father I wanted to be a writer. He said, “There goes your future,” and later refused to pay my way for college. So, I had to go the Liberal Arts route. This ended up being an 11-year setback. I don’t want to do the same thing to my kid. I want him to do what he loves. It’s possible that being a video game player/tester can lead to something else bigger and better. Or, maybe the pay for that ‘profession’ will increase.

These are all topics my son and I discussed around the fire pit a few nights ago. My argument was that he should look into a vocational trade school. I firmly believe that video games are popular because they offer instant gratification. That being the case, he would make more money and get the same type of satisfaction if he became an Information Technology (IT) professional. This is the point I tried to make several times as we passed a large jug of Gatorade back and forth while sitting close to the fire pit.

My son made his defense that passion and enjoyment were more important to him than level of income. This was an expected response, especially coming from someone without any kids. He also explained that he didn’t even know what a vocational school was, only that he heard of them. I went on to explain that it was a school designed to focus on one trade, so you would become an expert at it in a short period of time.

The conversation eventually ended with my son throwing the rest of the Gatorade into the fire pit and storming away. On the surface, this might sound like a loss for me. But I know my son. When he knows I have a point, he gets irritated and reacts that way. The next day, or possibly even a few hours later, he will come to his senses and admit defeat. I just hope he makes the right decision. And there’s no guarantee that my advice is correct.