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showbiz_liz
Jun 2, 2008
I am a 27 year old woman with a college degree who works in an office in NYC all day. I haven't ever been happy doing what I do, which is a mishmash of writing/editing, database management, website management, communications stuff... basically, typical liberal arts BA stuff. All along, though, I've assumed that the problem was the specific work environment, or my manager, or the mission. Because the idea of NOT working in an office is just not how I have ever pictured my life. And then, recently, I was encouraged to do a little thought exercise where I pretended I could not work in an office, and think of what I might like to do then. And I thought of a few things, and discarded them, and then I hit on carpentry and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

I have always been creative and good with my hands, and many of my hobbies have involved constructing or otherwise physically creating things that require precision and concentration. I enjoy and am good at DIY activities like putting up shelves, though I don't currently have much in the way of woodworking experience. And I'm good at math; I took two years of calc in high school and got a 710 on the math portion of the SAT. And I know that I excel at jobs that involve collaboration, working within constraints, and producing a physical product at the end.

Everyone is always saying that not enough Millennials are entering the trades, and carpentry is supposed to exceed the average job growth over the next 20 years, so this doesn't seem COMPLETELY insane. But I'm 27, a woman, and have no experience, so it does seem a LITTLE insane.

I've found a local organization (N.E.W.) that gives women basic training in the trades and then helps them find entry-level jobs, and I'm reaching out to people I know who know carpenters. Does anyone here have and other ideas or advice for me?

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Solenna
Jun 5, 2003

I'd say it was your manifest destiny not to.

Sadly I have no idea how trades work in the USA but I'm a journeyman cabinetmaker in Canada. I work in a fairly big shop (25 people-ish plus sales etc. upstairs) so all this is my personal experience in a shop that a good amount of equipment. It doesn't pay as well as carpentry, but it is more indoors, has more computer work (we have a computer controlled saw that can cut 4 4x8 sheets of material at a time I love it :3:), and is a very precise and detail oriented trade. Our regular journeyman rates are $21-23/hr, but supervisors, service people and installers make more than that. And one of our installers who works with one other guy is a woman in her mid-late 20s who's like 5'5" and lightly built, she's just hardcore. Before I started at my job I had a couple years woodworking in high school, a couple months volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, and a bachelors in biology. My boss basically gave me a chance and it worked out really well for both of us. I like my job, I'm good at it, and in Alberta at least, cabinetmaking classes are usually 1/4-1/3 women which is pretty cool. No idea about the USA of course.

So my advice would be look into cabinetmaking too, or find out if that's considered carpentry where you are, and finish carpentry is the fancy careful stuff like edging and baseboards and door frames while framing carpentry is throwing together the actual frames of houses and other buildings.

Leroy Diplowski
Aug 25, 2005

The Candyman Can :science:

Visit My Candy Shop

And SA Mart Thread
Watch a season or two of this old house and the new yankee workshop. If you are not bored to tears then you should probably be a carpenter or a middle aged vermont housewife.

Are you more interested in carpentry as it applies to construction or joinery or cabinetry or making furniture? They're all pretty different fields. If you are doing carpentry on the jobsite then you will probably be the only female working with a bunch of dudes who have never heard of diversity training. That said, the women you do meet on the jobsite are usually skilled as hell and love what they do; otherwise they wouldn't be there.

If you want make use of some overlapping skills from desk jockey to wood wrangler perhaps a career doing the type of stuff todd benson does would be cool. Just watch this TOH project. They use computers as much as they use other tools. When I first saw it I was like "Holy poo poo that's cool, now I want to go make timberframe houses for the 1%"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGjHrXHG5U

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