Archi
Ivy League of Trades Schools​
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There is a common misconception in our modern society that goes something like this: in this world, there are good jobs, and there are bad jobs. Furthermore, we think that good jobs are classified by the amount of money you make, the amount of education required, and the number of people envious of your title. As a result of this mindset we discourage people from pursuing careers that suit their skill sets and interests because they consider it beneath them.
The truth is, any job can be terrible and any job can be great, it all depends on how you approach it. The high profile starchitect pulling in half a million a year will still be miserable if they hate reading contract documents and wish their salary was a million. A plumber literally works with shit all day but they can be the happiest person in the world if instead of dwelling on the messy parts of their job they instead think about the smile on their customers face when the job is done.
There have always been people of every walk of life who care about their work, passionate plumbers, enthusiastic electricians, and the fact is, this mindset makes them the best at what they do. So why aren't we encouraging it? Like many cultural norms and societal castes, the conventional reasons don't really hold up to scrutiny.
These people are out there, it's just a matter of finding them and giving them the appreciation they deserve. The internet has the potential to both help and hinder this search, for starters, it makes it easier for them to advertise themselves, but we all know how easy it is to falsely represent yourself on the internet, so how to we differentiate between people who are really passionate about their work and somebody who just claims to be for marketing purposes? In my opinion the best solution to that is third party review platforms like Google's business reviews, and non-curated testimonials.When choosing your career, or giving others career advice, we tend to get hung up on the idea of "getting a good job" when instead we should focus on getting the right job.
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The real solution for a problem like this, one that is so baked in to our societal class system, has to be just as systematic as the outdated ideas it intends to replace. This problem needs to be addressed at an institutional level; if respected universities started offering respectable degrees for the types of vocations that have conventionally been left to trade schools we could begin to see ambitious people shifting into the fields that we need them in and that their skill sets naturally incline them towards. Imagine the paradigm shift that would occur in architecture and construction if there was an Ivy League of Trade Schools.
Our society as a whole, and our industry specifically, need to stop thinking about the plumber as inferior to the engineer and the carpenter as inferior to the architect and begin to recognize that there are good carpenters and bad carpenters, just like there are good architects and bad architects, and that each member of the project team has their own valuable contributions that they bring to the table. If we start thinking this way maybe we will start to see more competent people who are happy to work in the jobs that society currently considers beneath them.
