Tuesday, August 18, 2009

First Days at Dyna

On the road again! I just got transferred to Dyna for the third year of my apprenticeship. Honestly, I still get a little nervous whenever I start a new job, or go to a new job site. Luckily,I'm working with a good bunch, so settling in was easy.
I wish that I had exciting stories about the work I've done at Dyna so far, but, I don't, and that's not really a bad thing. What is exciting (at least to me) is Dyna's SERIOUS commitment to safety. During my first week with them, I was paid to sit through about nine hours of various safety classes and training. While they might not have been thrilling, it's a good feeling to know that there are people working to ENSURE that everyone leaves the job site in the same condition that they arrived. On the other hand, sometimes it's really uncomfortable to wear a hard hat, gloves and safety glasses for eight hours. BUT- Clark Construction and Dynalectric make it easy. Do it, or go home. Speaking only for myself, sometimes I need to be saved from myself. I always forget that I don't know everything until it's too late! I didn't need that stupid hard hat, until I rammed my head into a piece of rod in a ceiling. OOOUUUCCCHHH! Sometimes, on a quiet night, you can still hear my cries. So, maybe it is a good thing to have mandatory protective equipment use. Some men are born safe, and some have safety thrust upon them.
Anyway, after all of my safety classes and such, I met my foreman, and got a quick tour of the site. The first question I was asked was, "Are you good at running pipe?". Boy o' boy did I drop the ball on that one. My only answer should have been HELL YEAH, but what came out of my mouth was,"I can do it, but I don't know if I'm GOOD at it.". All I saw in the building up to that point were three and four inch pipe, which intimidated me. Maybe my answer to that question is why I'm hanging lights and pulling wire. I can tell you for sure that I won't make a stupid mistake like that again. Hopefully my foreman will see that I work hard and that I'm conscientious in every task that I do.
Well that's it for today, I've got to study for this #%**@!# test on Thursday. Have a good week all!

1 comment:

  1. Great blog post! I think the student perspective is so unique to this industry! I am the Marketing Manager for electrical textbooks, references, and study guides at Jones and Bartlett (www.jbpub.com/electrical) and am interested in linking your blog to our newly started trades blog (http://portfolio.jblearning.com/trades/). This will hopefully drive traffic to both of our sites. Please shoot me an email if you're interested. mnorlund@jbpub.com.

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