Career change - IT to stonemason: can you help?

Thinking of career changes lately, im interested in a possible career change from IT to stonemason, sounds crazy? well try sitting in a cubicle slowly going blind for 8 hours a day, im an outdoors person and hate the office culture that i endure all the time.

I assume plenty of folks here are involved in the building industry and you may be able to advise me on where would I start looking for training, apprenticeships, etc?

Re: Seeking career change! can you help?

Hi Morpheus

Interesting change of career! Regarding training, FAS run stonemason courses, you can check this out on their website here. I would advise that you see a guidance counsellor, you can find them in the golden pages, they should be able to do a career inventory and personality test to see what's a good fit. Perhaps a few week-ends working with a stonemason first might be a good idea before committing to the course. Hope this helps.

Re: Seeking career change! can you help?

morpheus said:

Thinking of career changes lately, im interested in a possible career change from IT to stonemason, sounds crazy? well try sitting in a cubicle slowly going blind for 8 hours a day, im an outdoors person and hate the office culture that i endure all the time.

I assume plenty of folks here are involved in the building industry and you may be able to advise me on where would I start looking for training, apprenticeships, etc?

Click to expand...

I suggest you try to contact Patrick McAfee: http://homepage.eircom.net/~mcafee/

Re: Seeking career change! can you help?

Patrick McAfee is certainly worth talking to and his books ("Irish Stone Walls" being one) are very readable and would be a great intoroduction to the theory behind the stone mason's craft. As already suggested you should try and get some hands on experience with an experienced mason, perhaps take a couple of weeks annual leave and see it as a "working holiday".

Re: Seeking career change! can you help?

Yeah, ive been thinking along those lines, obviously i would prefer to work at it for a couple of weeks hopefully in all kinds of weather to see if its the career for me. I will check out the FAS website, ive a friend who sadly passed away last year who was working at it for about 12 years and he had me convinced it was a very fulfilling and satisfying choice of employment, I've always been facinated with the old crafts such as stonemasonry and carpentry, also been thinking about ironmongery too (plenty of horsey people out where i live and not an ironmongers or saddlers within 10 miles), but stonemason has always been top of my list.

thanks for the advice.

[broken link removed] Ireland run courses in dry stone walling, and also working holidays where you learn and work on the job.