Jul 21, 2026 · 38 min · 11 segments
What do you do when the career you've been chasing takes seven years to become reality? You keep going. In this episode of Building Confidence, I sit down with electrician and maintenance supervisor…
Louise AzzopardiHostLike I think we sort of, especially in the first year, we kind of go, oh, it's fun.
We're here.
It's exciting.
Yeah.
And it's all new.
And then sort of second year comes and your tradesman's like ready to kick you out of the nest like a baby bird and send you on your way.
And you're like, I don't know anything.
Yeah.
But yeah, and for someone who was absolutely tragic and didn't pay any attention in math in high school, getting to my first block at TAFE and realising that I needed to know like Pythag and all that sort of stuff, I was like, cool.
And obviously I was a mature age apprentice at this stage as well.
So it's been, you know, quite a while since I'd been at school.
It was, yeah, I was just kind of not like, yeah, I wasn't quite prepared, I don't think, for how tough that sort of stuff was going to be.
I kind of, I always say like the first year or even the first two years of an apprenticeship can be like being dunked by a wave in the beach.
Yeah, 100%.
And there was stuff like I say to people all the time, like when we're in school and they say, oh, you know, the man standing under the street, like using trigonometry, like how far does this shadow go? And at school, I was like, I don't care about this.
Like, why do I care how far his shadow is going? So I just wouldn't pay attention.
And then the minute you hit trade school, they're like, right, you're going to use this, you're going to use trigonometry to work out whatever it is and do phaser diagrams.
Like I think we sort of, especially in the first year, we kind of go, oh, it's fun.
We're here.
It's exciting.
Yeah.
And it's all new.
And then sort of second year comes and your tradesman's like ready to kick you out of the nest like a baby bird and send you on your way.
And you're like, I don't know anything.
Yeah.
But yeah, and for someone who was absolutely tragic and didn't pay any attention in math in high school, getting to my first block at TAFE and realising that I needed to know like Pythag and all that sort of stuff, I was like, cool.
And obviously I was a mature age apprentice at this stage as well.
So it's been, you know, quite a while since I'd been at school.
It was, yeah, I was just kind of not like, yeah, I wasn't quite prepared, I don't think, for how tough that sort of stuff was going to be.
I kind of, I always say like the first year or even the first two years of an apprenticeship can be like being dunked by a wave in the beach.
Yeah, 100%.
And there was stuff like I say to people all the time, like when we're in school and they say, oh, you know, the man standing under the street, like using trigonometry, like how far does this shadow go? And at school, I was like, I don't care about this.
Like, why do I care how far his shadow is going? So I just wouldn't pay attention.
And then the minute you hit trade school, they're like, right, you're going to use this, you're going to use trigonometry to work out whatever it is and do phaser diagrams.
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