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and boxes full of old MK wiring accessories,
Ah... I used to get presented with boxes full of stuff like that as well! When I think back, I used to scavenge anything and everything I could find. Defunct TVs got stripped for parts and the wiring looms, and if I saw a telephone engineer working at the cabinet on the street corner I'd hang around in the hope that I could scrounge some left-over multiple-pair cable. It usually worked! My bedroom generally looked more like a mad professor's lab than that of a typical 10-year-old boy, so I know exactly where you're coming from! [Linked Image]

I'm afraid I can't offer much in the way of practical help in suggesting a route to go. As many ECN regulars will know, other than when I worked for BT I arrived at all my other fields of technical work via rather less than conventional means.

The one thing I would say, though, is that I think you may well be right in not wanting to go through a masters if you want to get into real, practical work as quickly as possible.

Wasn't there some spokesman for various trades on TV the other day saying that Britain was now in the position of having too many people leaving college with degrees these days and not enough willing to just get into an apprenticeship and start "getting dirty", so to speak?

There's also the problem that in some cases an employer will refuse a job to somebody who they feel is over-qualified.