Top 9 Tips for Trade School

Here are our Top 9 Tips for Trade School!

Most Importantly make sure you book a place to stay immediately. Quality places can disappear quickly and you do not want to get stuck with a less than ideal spot.

If you are looking to save some money I’d recommend contacting others who are going to be in the same block of school as you and rent a place together. Schools often have a bunch of resources to help connect you to landlords in your area. Make sure to check AirBnB as well as Kijiji for some great deals!

Secondly you want to make sure you have your EI or unemployment insurance unless your job is paying you to go to school. You’’ want to get this set up as soon as possible as it can take weeks or even months for you to receive your money.

Try to take advantage of as many grants as you can. For example in Canada you can be eligible for $1000 for each block of trade school up to $2000. Some provinces even offer a tool allowance as well. You also might qualify for a 0% interest $4000 dollar loan that doesn’t need to paid back until you finish your apprenticeship. This can relieve a lot of the financial strain caused by school. If you reside in the United States make sure to check what kid of grants you may be eligible for.

I would recommend to check out the classes you’ll be attending at school and go over the curriculum. Going into trade school you are expected to have at least some knowledge from working in the field.

It’s a good idea to just go through your courses and try to familiarize yourself with the basics of each course. You can usually expect to have classes like Electronics, Electrical Theory as well as Intro to Instrumentation.

You’ll want to make sure you get a complete tool list for your program. This can sometimes be found on the program website but if not you’ll want to contact your program coordinator.

Some schools supply all the tools you’ll need and others do not. I made the mistake of believing that the school would have all the required tools and ended up having to buy tools I already had because I didn’t bring my own.

You’ll want to make sure that you talk to as many different people as possible. Trade school can be very unique in that you’ll have the opportunity to chat with many other apprentices from a wide variety of industries. It can give you a perspective of how others operate and it can be very educational.

The other benefit is that if you develop a great reputation amongst your peers then it can significantly increase your job prospects. If you are able to demonstrate that you are reliable and proficient then you will build trust. This trust will make it more likely for your peers to recommend you to their employers if you ever need a job.

One of my favorite things about trade school was being able to work with other people and see how they do things. Everyone has different strengths. Some may be better at working on valves while others may be better at building control loops. It is a great opportunity to study how others operate and bring that back to your work.

One thing that was essential for myself was ensuring that i had the correct study tools. I didn’t always excel at school. In fact when I first did the college technician program I had a 2.07 GPA. I was very ashamed of this and decided to turn that around when I applied to trade school.

I managed to achieve a 4.0 GPA in my first 2 blocks. I attribute this to my new study tools. I leveraged technology to help me pick up my classes better. One tool that really helped me on my path was Quizlet. Quizlet is a website where you make flash cards. You can use it to memorize definitions or have it ask you questions about your study material.

I would highlight questions and terms that my teacher would go over in class and put them into my quizlet library. I also would do this with the assigned textbook questions that I struggled with.

Now this isn’t an option for all classes but a majority of the classes offer practice quizzes that contain a lot of the material found on the tests. These often have unlimited attempts so you can go over them as much as you want.

I tried to study for about an hour each night just going from my quizlet to the practice quizzes. I would do this as needed. Once I got more familiar with the material I spent less time on these tools.

Lastly make sure you have fun. Trade School is such an exciting time. You get to meet new people. It can be great break from work and you get to expand your knowledge about your trade and develop yourself into the best Instrumentation Technician that you can be.