- Dec 11, 2010
- 15,316
- 8,291
If school is done right, it exposes the students to a wide variety of topics so one can learn where his/her interests are, what you are strong in, and where you may lack strengths. Most of the time, the answer to these questions comes over time so although you may think so now, Brock, you really don't know the answers to these questions. It is said that the average college student changes his/her major four times before graduating. When my daughter entered college, her plan was to work toward becoming an anesthesiologist. Then it changed to general practitioner, then nurse practitioner, and finally she graduated with a degree in microbiology. Today, she is a hospital lab technician and does still have plans on one day seeking possibly a position as a physician's assistant or working in an antibiotic research lab.
My son, went to college with a goal of becoming a high school general sciences teacher. He has a double major in physics and chemistry with minors in mathematics and computer technology. He then transferred to a teacher's college and picked up his teaching certificate. After all of that when he did his internship he discovered he didn't really like teaching high school. He felt he struggled too much to bring it down to their level. I told him that maybe he should get his masters or PHD and teach at a higher level. Today, he is the central US regional manager for a construction management software company with 50+ employees under his care.
My original aspirations after leaving high school were toward becoming a high school band director. I loved music and my major instrument was the trumpet. After my first year in college I happened to pick up a good paying job working for one of the iron mining companies in northern MN. I got laid off after four years and then spent the next few years bouncing from one low-paying job to another until at 30 years of age I decided to go back to school to learn about electrical and pneumatic system controls for industrial machinery so I could find work in a maintenance role. I got hired out of that school to work in electrical assembly by the company I currently work for, which is a large packaging machinery manufacturer.
Why did I choose that career path? I took an aptitude test and the results revealed that I was strong mathematically and logically but not so strong in reading apprehension and literature. The tech school I was looking at offered the program called "Automated Systems Maintenance" and it sounded interesting so I took a leap of faith. The first year was highly geared toward board level electronics, which meant a lot of mathematics and without my high school education which included subjects like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry I know that I would have struggled through that program. I called up memories from virtually all of those subjects. In fact, I couldn't afford to by a calculator but happened to have a low level solar powered one that did +, -, *, /, and square root functions. It only had the ability to display 8 characters and a lot of our math involved 12 or more characters so I used scientific notation. When my younger classmates saw that, they had no clue how it worked.
The one thing I learned in my life is that if you really want to make something of yourself and get anywhere, you can't just sit on your hands. I began to study and learn about the mechanics of the machinery because I believed and still do believe that in order to be a good electrical technician one needs to have a good understanding of the mechanics of the machine. Whenever I could, I would help the mechanics assemble parts for the machine too because that taught me how to read the drawings and diagrams. That drive got me into the service department as a field service technician. That job sent me all over the US, Canada, Germany, and Korea installing and troubleshooting the equipment.
While serving in that role, I learned about a new product line that we were going to buy and to prepare myself so I wouldn't look foolish to our customers, I took the initiative to learn about that new line of equipment so I could service it for our customers. This added more value to my portfolio. There have been times when I actually helped fix competitor's equipment just to help our customers keep running. I saw that as just plain good public relations.
Because of the well-rounded and thorough understanding I had about the various types of machinery we sold, I built up my value and soon was asked to be our first field service technical adviser helping our service technicians and customers over the phone.
Over time I would get requests to modify the equipment to do different things. We didn't have anyone in field service to design electrical changes and it took too long to get it done through our main core engineering so I would modify the electrical drawings, order the parts, and design the program changes by hand and then send them with the mechanical parts. That started to grow and soon I was taught how to use the CAD system and asked to be our first field service electrical designer.
Today, I and three others work up the proposals for those modifications and other electrical designers are doing the work. Our group now has annual sales topping $6,000,000.00 because I and one other individual wanted to help meet our customers' needs. We do modifications today we would never have dreamed of considering when I got started.
In all my experience, I can tell you one thing without any doubt or hesitation at all. If I didn't have a good education through high school, I would never be where I am today.
My son, went to college with a goal of becoming a high school general sciences teacher. He has a double major in physics and chemistry with minors in mathematics and computer technology. He then transferred to a teacher's college and picked up his teaching certificate. After all of that when he did his internship he discovered he didn't really like teaching high school. He felt he struggled too much to bring it down to their level. I told him that maybe he should get his masters or PHD and teach at a higher level. Today, he is the central US regional manager for a construction management software company with 50+ employees under his care.
My original aspirations after leaving high school were toward becoming a high school band director. I loved music and my major instrument was the trumpet. After my first year in college I happened to pick up a good paying job working for one of the iron mining companies in northern MN. I got laid off after four years and then spent the next few years bouncing from one low-paying job to another until at 30 years of age I decided to go back to school to learn about electrical and pneumatic system controls for industrial machinery so I could find work in a maintenance role. I got hired out of that school to work in electrical assembly by the company I currently work for, which is a large packaging machinery manufacturer.
Why did I choose that career path? I took an aptitude test and the results revealed that I was strong mathematically and logically but not so strong in reading apprehension and literature. The tech school I was looking at offered the program called "Automated Systems Maintenance" and it sounded interesting so I took a leap of faith. The first year was highly geared toward board level electronics, which meant a lot of mathematics and without my high school education which included subjects like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry I know that I would have struggled through that program. I called up memories from virtually all of those subjects. In fact, I couldn't afford to by a calculator but happened to have a low level solar powered one that did +, -, *, /, and square root functions. It only had the ability to display 8 characters and a lot of our math involved 12 or more characters so I used scientific notation. When my younger classmates saw that, they had no clue how it worked.
The one thing I learned in my life is that if you really want to make something of yourself and get anywhere, you can't just sit on your hands. I began to study and learn about the mechanics of the machinery because I believed and still do believe that in order to be a good electrical technician one needs to have a good understanding of the mechanics of the machine. Whenever I could, I would help the mechanics assemble parts for the machine too because that taught me how to read the drawings and diagrams. That drive got me into the service department as a field service technician. That job sent me all over the US, Canada, Germany, and Korea installing and troubleshooting the equipment.
While serving in that role, I learned about a new product line that we were going to buy and to prepare myself so I wouldn't look foolish to our customers, I took the initiative to learn about that new line of equipment so I could service it for our customers. This added more value to my portfolio. There have been times when I actually helped fix competitor's equipment just to help our customers keep running. I saw that as just plain good public relations.
Because of the well-rounded and thorough understanding I had about the various types of machinery we sold, I built up my value and soon was asked to be our first field service technical adviser helping our service technicians and customers over the phone.
Over time I would get requests to modify the equipment to do different things. We didn't have anyone in field service to design electrical changes and it took too long to get it done through our main core engineering so I would modify the electrical drawings, order the parts, and design the program changes by hand and then send them with the mechanical parts. That started to grow and soon I was taught how to use the CAD system and asked to be our first field service electrical designer.
Today, I and three others work up the proposals for those modifications and other electrical designers are doing the work. Our group now has annual sales topping $6,000,000.00 because I and one other individual wanted to help meet our customers' needs. We do modifications today we would never have dreamed of considering when I got started.
In all my experience, I can tell you one thing without any doubt or hesitation at all. If I didn't have a good education through high school, I would never be where I am today.
