A recent comment by one of my watchers got me to thinking about vocational schooling, so I wanted to talk about that.

Back in high school, during my senior year, I was convinced to take a course in phlebotomy on the weekends at a trade school. It was definitely an interesting experience, and even though nothing came of it, I have to say I did enjoy taking the class itself and it's something I'd like to briefly discuss with everyone in the style of a self-interview!


Phle-what?

Phlebotomy, for those who don't know the proper term for it, is basically sticking a needle into someone for the purposes of drawing blood. Yes, that unpleasant experience which happens to all of us for dozens of reasons as we grow up and grow old. But, different facilities handle the procedure differently. It's entirely possible that every blood draw you've had done was performed by a nurse, nurse's assistant, or someone else from a different field, that was trained in phlebotomy on the side, rather than a technician whose one and only trade skill was that. And that's what I was - a trained technician.


So this is something you can just go and learn in a vocational school?

For me it was, but that's also handled differently by different states (which factors into the latter part of this story). I had to go to this school to attend class every Saturday for the Spring semester of my senior year in high school. So, all-in-all it was a short course considering it's part of the medical field.


You said nothing came of it, though? What happened?

That's correct, I was never employed as a phlebotomist, and nothing I've done in my life has drawn upon those skills. I don't regret taking that class, either. I enjoyed the experience. But life circumstances got in the way.

My mother and her daughter were having intense financial and domestic problems. I was young and stupid (as opposed to now, where I'm older and...well...older), and I thought I could help. In my eagerness to try to save my mother from bankruptcy, I planned to move out there with them and get a job to stabilize the household.

The problem was, as my high school graduation neared, my plane ticket was booked, I was packed and ready to fly. My flight was three days after my high school graduation. After I graduated my phlebotomy class, I was quite happy with myself. But, there's a catch. I was only certified to perform phlebotomy in the state of New York. There's a national licensing test that's given out that allows you to be employed as a phlebotomist in all 50 states...but it was scheduled for weeks after I had to depart for Las Vegas. So that meant that I would be arriving in Vegas with nothing of vocational value.


Okay, so why not take the test in Las Vegas?

Because as I alluded to earlier, different states do things differently. If I had landed in Vegas with that license, instead of that certificate, I could have sought employment as such. But Vegas had a different set of rules for administering the test itself. The only people who administered the test was a local community college that refused to simply administer it ad hoc. To qualify to take it, you had to take their phlebtomoy course. Which sounds almost reasonable...except for them, it's an elective that you take on the side of select two-year degree programs. In other words, they wouldn't give me the test unless I attended their school for two years in the pursuit of a more expensive degree, with phlebotomy licensing being secondary to that.

I barely passed high school. I excelled in the sciences and math, but I absolutely bombed in history and foreign language. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have even gotten my diploma, and I wouldn't have if my teachers in those subjects hadn't seen me struggle so hard so they gave me a passing "D" just to get me out of there and on with my life.

Unlike vocational schools who are happy to train individuals to master a particular set of skills, colleges have this stick up their ass about making everybody a "well-rounded" individual who knows a great deal about every field of study but specializing in one or two. That wasn't going to happen with me. My high school didn't even offer chemistry class, because it was cut from the curriculum to save money. Even if I thought I could get through college somehow, I'd have to tack on a bunch of remedial courses to get myself up to basic proficiency in a multitude of subjects. There was no time or money for anything like that; the very reason I was moving out there was because my mother was on the verge of bankruptcy to begin with.


What ended up happening with all this?

Well, despite my best efforts, the situation with my mother collapsed because no teenager can save their parents from making irrational and ignorant decisions. Those decisions added up until the stuff hit the fan, and everybody was scattered to the four winds. My mother lost the house, which was in terrible shape and she was lucky to sell it off before she had to declare bankruptcy. She was temporarily homeless and ended up living with a friend of hers until she got back on her feet. I ended up in Pennsylvania, where I still reside.


Did you pursue this in Pennsylvania?

I looked into it, briefly. By the time that my life stabilized to the point where I could look into things like that again, I found out that phlebotomists (in this area anyway) made less than my current job, so I never pursued it again past that. In retrospect it does make sense; if any schmuck can take a semester at a vocational school, it's probably a market that's easily saturated. Even if such a job sounds a lot more prestigious than whatever blue-collar work I currently do, prestige and pride don't pay the bills. Cash does. And the cash wasn't there. Maybe there are career opportunities and advancement that would make such pursuits more viable long-term, but gambling on the future is a rich man's luxury. I, a member of the working poor, don't get the luxury of gambling that things will get better. I cannot afford to live in the future; I have to worry about the here and now.