McKenzie Wilkins: Wiring a Life of Her Own

When McKenzie Wilkins found out that CCC students had built the frame of her new home, she was sitting in a CCC classroom. She took it as a sign.

Wilkins, who holds a bachelor's degree in Theatrical Design and Production from Arizona State University, spent years working as a stagehand at venues across Arizona, including the Pepsi Amphitheater and the Orpheum in Flagstaff. Along the way, she fell in love with the technical side of live performance, the lighting rigs, and sound systems. She also fell in love with Flagstaff but needed to find a way to support herself full-time. She realized she needed a skill set that could grow alongside everything she already loved, and when a friend, now her fiancé, mentioned that he had gone through CCC's Electrical Technology Certificate Program and loved it, she thought she should give it a try.

Around this time, she had also been selected as one of the first recipients of Habitat for Humanity's new tiny home program on Flagstaff's west side. The 500-square-foot house was still under construction when she walked into her first CCC session, a non-credit, community DIY electrical repairs class open to anyone. She had signed up partly out of curiosity about the subject, partly to test whether the full certificate program was worth committing to. The instructor was Vance Peterson. Midway through the class, he mentioned that CCC's woodshop students had built the frames for the Habitat tiny homes going up across town. She realized that the frame of the house she was about to move into had been built in the same shop where she was now sitting.

That coincidence wasn't lost on her. If CCC was already part of the structure of her home, she figured she might as well be part of what powered it, and she joined the Electrical Technology Certificate Program.

"Now that I'm a homeowner, I don't want to have to pay an electrician to do work on my home," she says. "I may as well just learn how to do it myself. And then that's a skill I could use to help my friends, help my mom as she gets older, or pick up side jobs when I need extra money."

Wilkins, who has ADHD, describes the classroom and lab environment at CCC as one that works with her, not against her.

"One thing I really loved about being here is that we do get to move around a lot," she says, noting that the workshop component puts students on the tools they are most likely to use on the job.

She also found that the hands-on structure made the material stick in a way that works well for her.

"I can actually picture everything I’m learning," she says. "I actually picture why it matters. It makes the information stick in your brain better when you can immediately understand why it matters and when you're going to use it."

Her instructors, she says, also brought something to the classroom that no textbook can replicate:  years of field experience and a genuine investment in seeing their students succeed.

"They've gone out there and literally built something," she says. "They have learned the hard way on a lot of things, so that's why they are so good at telling us what to do, or what not to do. And they're good at explaining why.”

Wilkins is also looking ahead in other ways. She has registered an LLC and is thinking carefully about what a small business could look like that brings together her background in theatrical lighting, her growing expertise in residential electrical work, and her lifelong interest in interior design.

Her new trajectory, she points out, started with a course that cost just $500 but gave her an OSHA 30-hour certificate, qualifying her to serve as a supervisor in the state of Arizona. It is the advantage of taking courses at a community college, she says. "Not only are you spending a lot less money to get your education, you're also more likely qualified for higher income as soon as you're done.

 "If you try it and figure out you hate it, you didn't go into a whole bachelor's degree of debt to find out. The stakes aren't as high," she adds.

For students on the fence, she offers the same kind of advice that once nudged her forward.

"Don't be afraid to ask questions," she says. "If there is someone in your life who has what you want, ask them what they did. That is partly how I made my decision. I had friends who went to trade school and ended up as really  successful business owners because they practiced every day and got better at a skill."

"Once you put in the hours, you become an expert. And when you pick your specific thing, you just keep getting better at it."