Co-op
 

I’m a student in high school about to start co-op in the beginning of the 2nd semester. I’ve narrowed my options down to wanting to do performance mods. The problem is that I don’t know where many shops are. If any one could tell me where some good shops in the GTA are it would help me out a lot. Thanks!

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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but what you *want* to be doing in high school co-op, and what you *end up* doing in co-op are TWO completely different things. Don't be disappointed when you figure this out for yourself. High school co-op is good for getting a feel of the type of work environment your chosen career will provide you with, not what kind of work you'll be doing... you have to start out at the bottom and work your way up. Such is life.

Yeah coop will offer you an automotive choice, it will probably be at a dealership or somthing like that, maybe by some stroke of good luck you will end up at a performance shop but i highly doubt it most are to small.

A smart person once said :

"I never let school get in the way of my education"


BTW i've seen a coop kid recently at one of the offices I visit . He was in there for software development . His duties included :

- making cofee
- helping the office manager cary toilet paper and paper towels
- cleaning loose computer wires

I am personally glad they kicked me out of highschool before they introduced the 40 hour slavery . Not even sure if they had coop back then .

some performance shops actively take CO-OP students. the one i suggested does forsure. But right now i imagine theyre dead. If its for sept then you have a chance.

Yeah that’s another thing, I actually want to get some hands on experience on not just getting coffee. A buddy of mine went to Concepts on Wheels, and they were letting him do real work. I was planning on going there but they're not taking co-op students anymore because of liability.

damn, thats a nice place to co-op.. for sure..

Your duties at any shop you get a placement at will be directly based on your mechanical competance before going. A shop won't teach you anything if you are some highschool co-op kid. You will most likely sweep the floors. If anything, do a few oil changes.

ya i did a co-op at Kennedy Ford in Oakville and they actually let me do alot of work right from the beginning, first day i replaced a waterpump on an ambulance and over the semester i pulled alot of engines and did a great variety of work without the help of the shop mechanics it was a great learning experience but most of my buddies that have done co-op end up doing crappy jobs like sweeping floors and garbage duties

So I guess my best bet would be to go to different dealership, and then just try to talk to them and see which one would be best. Thanks for the help.

please don't think i'm an , but I have to say this because it bothers me ...

do you really think that the best thing you could do with your life is do shitty jobs on ppl's cars and then argue with them about the price ?

There is so much need for research in phisics , health , astrology ... paths in life that WILL HELP YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE 100 , 200 ... 1000 YEARS FROM NOW ... not piss off some poor guy who's car broke down .

it's nothing at you , or directly at anybody who does this kind of job ... just some food for tought for people who set their life's goals WAY too low ... it's something that i'd want to voice out constantly since I believe 95% of the people in this world , can't understand the concept that they are part of something a lot greater ...

I put car fixing down there with tow trucks , garbage cleaning , car selling , house selling or any other job who will eventually be done by Artificial Inteligent beeings in the near future , leaving the 5% interested in evolution ... evolve ... and the inferior ( by choice ) bulk ... starve


If u're just getting ready to go out of highschool ... think about this ... anybody shoud ... because if they all would , 90% of the problems of the world wouldn't exist ... but it's not like the fat asses and menopaused bitches from the education staff would ever bother to try to inspire kids to greater things when they have their own problems at home to deal with once the clock slowly turns past 4 PM





now i'll hit post , and wait for people to diss me because i'm not with the program :)

No offence taken, but I don’t want to just fix cars, but modify them or restorations or open up a shop of my own. I realize that modifying gained a lot of popularity after the F&F movies, and it’s starting to slowly decrease. I’ve herd of a couple shops having to close down because of not enough business. Is there even a future in the aftermarket industry?

And Zapa, your right, no one at school has said anything like that. Thanks for putting it in perspective.

[ENGLISH ONLY!]

Zero unfortunately these guys are right, i have heard of a few shops that take co-op students, y shouldent they, they just get to use u as their bitch to get them some coffee or to clean the floors. Of course u get to get out of school for a semester and get guranteed 4 credits without failing but thats if u want to do their garbage work. Another bonus is the experiance u can put on ur resume.

Zapa I understand where you are coming from, but I think there are many things that you haven't considered. Some people are completely happy doing that line of work, being a so-called blue-collar worker. Some people just prefer the kind of job where they just show up and put in 8 hours of hard manual labour, and other people prefer the kind of job where they show up to the office, deal with BS all day, then go home and stress about it (or keep working on it). I think it's not so much a matter of a lack of motivation as it is a lack of knowing what jobs are out there and available to young people. For example, this guy wants to work on cars. Meaning he wants to turn wrenches all day. So what kind of job does he look for? Automotive related obviously, because he has no knowledge of anything else. But what if the school provided him with actual guidence (yeah right)? He would be more aware of the different job options available to him, and he would probably change his mind because he found a job that he finds interesting, yet is still related to his original career. An example of this would be an aerospace technician, be it the guy who assembles engines or inspects landing gear. These jobs may require more education due to the no-room-for-error nature of the aerospace industry, but in the end it will work out when he's making more money and actually looks forward to work every day. I think that schools need to put forth the effort and step in and help students decide what they actually want to do with their lives, rather then putting them through 4 years of classes that may not even be necessary to them if they had any guidence and knew what career they wanted to head into. The schools have their little guidence offices that students can come to for help, but thats not enough. They need to take an active role in helping out students, perhaps by having job fairs or something to that effect. There's so many people my age that have NO IDEA what they are doing, yet they still attend college or university every day. I can appreciate going to school and getting a degree, that takes a lot of hard work and determination, but what's the use of getting an english or history degree when you end up working at a place that make nuts and bolts (for example). These kids go off to post-secondary not knowing what they're doing and they end up wasting their time and money getting an education in something that may not benefit them in the years to come. That's my $0.02.