Most liked posts in thread: Career - Right Turn

Only mechanical and electrical for me, no body shop.....

And they're never going to touch my Clubby, or my Jag!

(Unless I "let" them wash and polish it )

I won't know till Monday what I'll be teaching, but they need someone for 3 different areas - Brakes, Front end and Suspension and Intro to Electrical. But who knows, they might have me in transmissions or diff repair....

it was kinda funny, one of the other teachers also sat in on the interview, and he was a tech at the Porsche dealership I ran the Parts dept at in 1971!

 

Thanks to all for your encouragement and positive thoughts!

I got my class assignment, I'll be teaching Steering and Suspension I, my lecture is 10am to 11, then I have lab from 11-2pm, Wed and Fridays. No 6 am classes for me, Yay!

I also found out the shop is air conditioned!

I have a lot of reading to do between now and the 22nd (my first class) and I need to get familiar with all the equipment - the have two brandy new alignment racks, with some kinda super fancy schmancy computer operated deally bobby - I mean it's got fricken lasers! :biggrin5:

(obscure movie reference - Austin Powers)

 

Well, after 1 week of classes I can honestly say.......so far so good.

No one has died or been injured, I consider that a good sign! :biggrin5:

I do 1 hour of lecture and 3 hours of lab each day, but only 2 days a week.

We did mostly demonstrations of the equipment up till now, but next week we'll bust out the wrenches and start doing some fixin!

They're also going to get their first test.....

In talking with them and doing the demos, I've found out that some of these guys already know what they're doing and are not afraid to jump in with both feet and go to work, others are complete neophytes. They're supposed to have taken an intro class before they can take mine, but I have 3 or 4 guys who are taking the intro class concurrently.

I have done a good job of preparing before class, and a few of the guys have started being more relaxed and forthcoming. I start each lecture class with some You Tube vids of something fun, a drag race or Russian dash cams or something very visual, it helps wake them up and gets them talking (I do this before actual class time).

One thing I'm still having trouble with is remembering their names, but that will get better with time and experience.

 

Last week we got to work on some "customer" cars - customers in this case are either students, faculty, employees or their friends and family - that's a lot of potential work!

Since classes are officially all running now, the requests are starting to roll in, but before we worked on anyone else's car, I had many of my students put their own car on the rack and we did a lot of looking, wiggling and checking for loose parts, we also did a whole passle of alignments - and all of them checked out or were able to be brought into spec.

It hasn't been without casualties tho, fortunately none of them from my student's work. One class went to change the front struts on a Kia Sedona and when tightening the top nut with an impact gun, managed to strip the threads. They put the old strut back in so that the car could be moved off the rack and it sat till the new one came in.

They also had a Ford 500 in for rear shocks, and at the end of the first 2 1/2 hours still hadn't gotten one out....that car also got put back together till the next class, when - after looking up the instructions - they were able to get both changed out in one 4 hour class (yes it ran overtime) but at one point there were 8 guys and the instructor working on it.

One of my students was working on his car in brakes class, and someone didn't tighten the lug nuts on one of his wheels and he lost the wheel on the way to school the next day - THAT was a learning experience! Fortunately all it damaged was the wheel.

This week I have a Chrysler mini-van coming in for a new steering rack, tie rod ends and alignment - that will be the first one of those we've done so it should be interesting, and I also have a Protege coming in for a front end rebuild, shocks, ball joints , tie rods, alignment etc.

Another teacher is bringing in a Corolla for 4 new tires - I'm thinking there may also be a couple of new wheels and an alignment in store for this car based on the owner's description, age and general driving history......one of the other instructors said she drives by "feel".....:biggrin5:

There's definitely been an uptick in attention span, I've only had one student drop the class, so over all I think it's going OK.

We'll see what excitement this week brings....

 

It's possible this may be a one shot deal for me, I found out today that they don't teach this class every semester, and it's not on the calendar for the next one. Of the classes they are offering, there's not much that I feel competent to walk in and teach, and since the full time profs get first choice there may not be a spot for me.

I'll know a lot more next month.

In the meantime, we had a bit of a "come to jesus" meeting today in my class, and I noticed a marked improvement in both willingness to cooperate and attentiveness to their work once we got to lab. I also got a lot more class participation this morning. Just needed to let them know who was running the show I guess......

 

Yeah.......

I try to look at it as them doing me a favor, cause they got me out of there. After the ownership changed, I knew it was just a matter of time and I probably should be glad they let me stay as long as they did. But then, I could have gotten on somewhere else while I was young enough to be considered. Once you're over 60, it's a whole new ballgame....

So, I'm trying to take the long view....the "all things happen for a reason" view......and just be happy I'm out of a negative management situation. I was really getting to hate the place and those that ran it.

I'm glad your situation is working out too, what field did you wind up in that you needed a lic?