“To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer”
– Alexis Carrel
Like a phoenix, rising from its own ashes, I’ve metaphorically crawled from my own ashes and am now proudly doing something that is completely unlike the previous two careers that I’ve had… ehem…
I’m an actual 737 aircraft mechanic.
With everything that I and my family have endured over the past five-ish years, I’m kinda proud of that.
No, I don’t have my A&P licenses yet.
Yet.
They’re not at all required as a mechanic at an MRO. But that absolutely doesn’t mean I’m not going to get them. They’re just on hold with the timing of the whole offer/acceptance/start/onboarding with Boeing.
It seems my pursuit of A&P certificates is on hold temporarily–I’ll be in temporary training for Boeing for 30-60 days (?) followed by temporary assignment in Moses Lake for about a year.
I’ve already taken two of my three written exams–General and Airframe–and still need to take the Powerplant written. Fortunately, there’s a PSI test location in Moses so I can take that pending exam. That leaves taking the O&P for each, airframe and powerplant. There are two DMEs in Moses so I can see about taking Orals and Practicals for both airframe and powerplant as time allows.
I just hope that I can retain the knowledge long enough to do well on each O&P.
I’m still annoyed, but the offer from a prospective employer was sustained, not retracted — they’re still quite happy to have me and, frankly, I’m quite happy to contribute.
In fact, they’ll be happy to have me and a few classmates from the SCC AMT program even without our full certifications* yet.
As my own story continues to unfold into the next chapter in life, here’s how it goes so far:
I met briefly with a recruiter (for about 15 minutes, TBH) for Boeing Aircraft who extended an offer on the spot to for an aircraft maintenance role.
I accepted.
Of course, Boeing management countered with a number of contingencies. Work history, criminal background, credit, education, drug screen, etc.
Contingencies were all met.
And, as of this morning, I can officially tell the world that I’ll be assuming a maintenance and inspection role in Moses Lake after a month of Boeing process training in Seattle.
Oh! I have so many things to get sorted in the next four weeks.
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*The role with Boeing Aircraft doesn’t require an A&P certification, but none of us is prepared to forego our certifications. The whole point of putting in the time was to gain our certs.
I’m annoyed with an organization with which I’ve not worked for three years. Apart from the abrupt concealment of our open-source contributions shortly before my departure, it seems they also weren’t entirely forthright with me about my role (I should redact this post). According to the records they had released to TheWorkNumber, the title I had prior to the layoff wasn’t an official title — but was a title that was a few years old.
And why the date discrepancies? Might it be that my resumé only addresses roles held in the past ten years? Are they looking for my complete history back to 1985?
And then there’s a curious issue with my degree from 2002. Granted, the school no longer exists, but HireRight seems to have established contact with DTC, which then reported that they haven’t any history of my attendance.
Okay, here’s a copy of my diploma and, while unofficial, here’s the transcript that I’d received from DeVry/DTC a few years ago.
HireRight, doing a background check, has marked my background with discrepancies, which, no doubt, will result in an abrupt retraction of an offer that an employer had made.
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Highly Annoyed
the rest of me 