"You can be a 20-year or 50-year journeyman and still learning new things. It can be daunting but it also makes it exciting. It's definitely a rewarding trade."
Carlos Carabantes
Even after he completed Lethbridge College’s Electrical Apprenticeship program in 2015, Carlos Carabantes still kept coming to campus. For the last two years, however, that commute has been for work, not school, as Carabantes has been working at the college’s new trades and technologies facility as a journeyman electrician with ESC Automation, a building automation and energy management company. “It’s exciting to be part of such a big project,” he says.
Carabantes, who has worked on both phases of the project, and his colleagues are installing the controls and valves for heating and cooling the building. Most recently, he has been working to install sensors and controls, something he hadn’t worked with before. “That’s the thing – even though I got my ticket here, as a journeyman electrician, you never really stop learning,” says Carabantes. “You can be a 20-year or 50-year journeyman and still learning new things. It can be daunting but it also makes it exciting. It’s definitely a rewarding trade.”
Carabantes says he felt he received good training at the college and remembers some great instructors, including Dean Coughlin and Jeremy Waterfield. And the experience paved the way to “a job that I actually truly enjoy,” he says. “I really like working for ESC and am really interested and curious to see where my career will go from here. There is room to grow in this business and to have a long-term career.”
There is only one downside to working at his alma mater, he says. “I wish we could have taken our classes here!” he says with a laugh, looking at the state-of-the-art facility which will open for classes in August.
