Calling for advice from all you UK Sparkies!

I’ve just graduated with a 2:1 BSc in computing, it’s taken me four years to get and after it all, I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t want a career in IT. My first and main passion was always electrics and physics. Ever since I was about four years old, and we had an extension built on our house, I would play in the back yard with bricks, pipes and cast off wiring and sockets from the house. Most kids got duplo or Lego for their 5th birthday, I used to get OSMA piping, Hager breaker panels and boxes full of old MK wiring accessories, no word of a lie! My dad, who is in the building trade, would bring home all the odds that the sparkies had thrown out for me. I had a shed at the end of our garden, which everyone called the mad lab, where I would take VCRs, washing machines etc to pieces. By the age of 13 I had installed a coin meter, a huge Wylex fuse box, ring main, lights and loads of gadgets on big old MEM switch fuse disconnectors. It was brilliant, but sadly all gone now.

But back to my point, I had spent years doing electrical work, either at home or at my uncle’s factory, and always wanted to be an electrician. It was a career that my dad always dissuaded me from, as he thought I should do “better”. The careers advisors said I should go into computing with my skills and a-levels, so I did. But my heart really isn’t in it. Now I’m 23 and need to really think about what I want to do. I did try to enrol at my local college to sit the C&G part 1, to start the ladder to getting “qualified”, but the course was full and its going to take me four or more years to get “qualified” to an equivalent level to which I feel I already understand. Competent, informed and experienced, but not qualified, as I would call it. The 16th Ed of BS7671 sits by my bed [Linked Image]

Ideally, I really want to become an electrical engineer, or inspector/commissioner but have no real idea of how to get there now. People have said I should go do masters degree in electrical engineering, but that’s going to just be more theory, academia and no hands on work, plus the fact I now have a £15k uni debt and so can’t afford it! Things are a little more complicated in that I am visually impaired and so I cannot drive and have some limitations in what I can do.

Is a career in electrical engineering truly just going to be a pipe dream for me? If not, how can I realistically get my hands into it? ANY advice is greatly appreciated!

Ash (LiveWireUK)

Sorry for long post, it’s a subject I am quite passionate about and on my mind a lot at the mo!