After years at a dead-end job, adult school provided Nasario Martinez with a new career in wastewater operations
After years at a dead-end job, adult school provided Nasario Martinez with a new career in wastewater operations.
Change can be a frightening concept, especially when it comes to changing your career path later in life. But for people like Nasario Martinez who decide to make that change, places like Castro Valley Adult & Career Education are there to help.
Martinez, now 49, decided he needed to make a change when he was 43. Having worked in the packaging industry for nearly 27 years, he realized he’d reached a dead-end in his career.
“You could say that I went through my midlife crisis at the time because my plan A didn’t work out and I didn’t have a plan B,” Martinez recalls. “So I was like, ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’”
“If you are motivated and you have the desire to excel and learn, the class is for you.”
Nasario Martinez, Grade II Wastewater Operator
Martinez struggled with that question for some time, worrying the skills he’d built during his time in packaging wouldn’t be transferable to new paths. The answer came when his wife recommended taking classes at Castro Valley Adult & Career Education. He wasn’t initially sure what he wanted to study, but his future started coming into focus after he enrolled in a wastewater operations course.
“During the presentation I realized that I had a lot of transferable skills,” Martinez says. “There were a lot of things that had appealed to me in the introduction, and so I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna sign up and take the class.’”
He started his first course in 2019, and credits his teachers and their clear communication for making him more comfortable returning to a classroom for the first time in 25 years.
“If you are motivated and you have the desire to excel and learn, the class is for you,” Martinez says. “They tell you from the beginning that you have to do all the footwork. You gotta get out there, you’ve gotta network.”
In addition to taking classes, Martinez was still at his previous job and doing volunteer work as an operator in training. For nearly a year Martinez worked 10 to 16-hour days. Even after completing his courses in 2020, he was still forced to wait nearly 15 months before getting another volunteer position due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these hardships, Martinez eventually landed a position with the Rodeo Sanitary District. He says his wastewater operations courses were integral to securing the job.
“My supervisor, after I got hired and down the line, told me that what set me apart from other applicants was that I took the eight-month Castro Valley course,” Martinez recalls. “So I knew about the industry, I passed tests, I was able to be coherent in all the basic information.”
Having been at his current job for more than a year now, Martinez is not only happier in his current career in wastewater operations, but feels more secure in his and his family’s future.
“Once I got the position, a lot of the burden that was weighing on my shoulders, like retirement and ‘what am I going to do now and what am I going to do to support my family’ just blew away in the wind like a pile of dry leaves.”
Castro Valley Adult & Career Education is part of the Mid-Alameda County Consortium (MACC), one of 71 consortia of adult education providers across the state. The MACC includes Chabot College, Las Positas College, Eden ROP, Tri Valley ROP, and the adult schools in Castro Valley, Dublin, Hayward, Livermore, New Haven, Pleasanton, San Leandro, and San Lorenzo. For more information about Castro Valley Adult & Career Education, go to www.cvadult.org. For more information about the MACC and its member schools, go to www.macc4ae.org.
Written by Jacob Peterson
| Regions | Classes |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | Careers in Manufacturing-Construction |
