How did you decide to do what you do?

[Chesapeake]

The thread that mentioned land surveyors reminded me of how my father picked that line of work. When he was 10 years old he saw a survey team come through his father's farm in eastern North Carolina firming up boundaries that were first laid down during colonial times. He took note of their khakis, calf boots and campaign hats, and decided that whatever they were, that's what he wanted to be. He went off to college and got a civil-engineering degree, got a license, and wound up traveling up and down the East Coast working on the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Eventually went to work for the gummint in D.C.

I went into the writing business after discovering that I was mathematically challenged, but seemed to do okay behind a typewriter.

So ... what about you?

[paulschlimm]

So much of my family was in the military that I reckon it was ingrained from an early age. None of it was forced, and my folks always told me to do what I'd be happiest doing. My Dad had a mantra when were were growing up. He said, at 18, we could either join the Army or go to college. Either case, we had to leave the house.

Ches, my Dad was a civil engineer, too.

I have no regrets about the profession, even with the systemic lunacy innate in Government service.

[Cornflake]

Interesting topic, Chesapeake.

I was an English major who planned on being a world-renowned poet and novelist. While in college, I thought that the law students I knew were stuffy and boring. I pretty much swore that I would never go to law school.

After graduating, my English degree wasn't worth a lot. I got a job as a copyeditor at a lawbook publishing company in New York. I did that for a couple of years. I noticed that I was stuck indoors all day like the lawyers in the company, but that they made four or five times as much money as I did.

I then resigned and moved to Texas to write my earth-shaking novel. I wrote one and it wasn't very good. The obvious limits to my talent put a damper on my literary aspirations. I finally applied to law school more or less as a concession of failure, and as a result of not being able to find a better fit in the world. I'd been a debater and they mostly seemed to wind up in law school.

The fact that I've enjoyed law a lot more than I expected to is probably due in part to the fact that my expectations of it were so very low to begin with.

[Russell Letson]

I've always been a layabout. No skills, no ambition, and a strong aversion to any kind of exertion.

I'm a natural.

[Jawbone]

Didn't really want to go to college. I was building decks in a very rich part of California (Marin Co.). But back in '67 the draft board was turning over every stone looking for warm bodies if they were not in school.
Two years later after an AA degree, they were still looking. So, back to school I went. But now I needed a major, hey, forestry looks fun. After graduation the war was over and I had a BIG dept of student loans, no job and nowhere to live.

Took the first job that wanted me. California Division of Forestry. Nobody told me that all they did was fight forest fires. Being a graduate in forestry and in excellent shape at that time (both mind and body). I was put on the first ever (for California) Heli-a-tac Crew. For two seasons I flew all over California making initial attacks on forest fires jumping out of a Bell Jet Ranger II helicopter.

Fun and exciting, yet the pay sucked big time. $333/mo.

My next job was that of a Timber Cruiser. Where all I did is walk around the woods and measure trees. I could only hang with that for a year, then all the trees looked the same and all the mountains got steeper and the snow deeper, the wind stronger, the sun hotter, the snakes meaner and the mosquitoes bigger.

Then I worked as a Surveyors Assistant. I Instantly fell in love with the work and have never looked back. Been 40 years now. I did take a leave of absence to build two houses though.

[Russell Letson]

You guys make me tired just reading this stuff.

I need a little lie-down.

[sidheguitarmichael]

I married another musician.

[Cornflake]

Surveying sounds not bad at all.

[theevan]

Couldn't find a real job.

That's the short version, but it's what happened.

[j]

Well, letsee...

I think I knew I just had to try the music thing when I was about 16 or so. A year later, my mom lost her 15-year struggle with cancer. I stayed the course for a year after graduating HS, going to pre-med as planned but without much enthusiasm nor determination (the only time I had any difficulty at school—shows you that motivation is really the key ingredient...)

By the end of the first semester I had already made it clear with my dad that the "real job, music on the side" thing wasn't gonna work. Ended up applying to Belmont University (on Muriel Anderson's suggestion), getting in, and choosing a classical major because I didn't know a thing about jazz (still don't).

I remember getting to Nashville and telling everyone how I was a classical major, but didn't care about classical music. I just wanted to do my own thing, play shows, and this was just a degree that would let me do it.

Then a couple of semesters into the program, something bit me and I was hooked on the real classical deal (I think it was theory class and Debussy). Ended up deciding I wanted to take the education to the next level, especially considering I didn't (and don't) have the chops/time to cut it SOLELY as a concert guitarist (but really, who can?).

I applied to a few top-tier schools, including the Royal College of Music (worst audition of my life, I think they're still laughing), and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Unexpectedly, I was accepted into SFCM and given enough financial aid to make the dream feasible.

That dream turned into the best two years of my life.

Midway through that, I met Paula and decided: a) I wanted to stay in the Bay Area, and b) I didn't want to get a DMA. Applied to four schools, got into UCSC with a sweet financial deal, and have been reading critical theory and terrorizing undergraduates happily ever since.

So it's been a long and winding road in its own right—at least in term of directions. We'll see what kind of employment I'll manage to find in another two years or so

[millring]

I followed the path of least failure. I decided where to go to college based on the possibility of playing sports (I was recruited to play soccer, figured -- based on friends who went on before -- that I could also make the basketball team). I liked lit and natural sciences but I couldn't type to save my soul. I ended up in the art department taking studio courses. I saw a potter's wheel in action for the first time, and found something at which I was competent. Within a year and a half of learning, I was making a living from my pottery.

[Russell Letson]

I've always wondered exactly when you started going to pot.

[dradtke]

I liked acting in plays in high school. Hung around the theater department in college and found out that most were better actors than I was, but I was pretty good at figuring out how to build stuff.

After college I knew no one could make a living doing theater, so I worked as a carpenter for a year. Then my old professor quit teaching to open a dinner theater, hired a bunch of his students because we were cheap, and asked if I could help with the theater remodeling.

His first stage manager wasn't working out, so opening night I stepped in (understudy steps in opening night and becomes a star!)

Fifteen years later I realized that trade shows and museums are the same as scenery, pay better, and have better hours.

[Village Idiot]

I dropped out of college in 82 because I bought a 72 Buick LeSabre from a drunk for $25 and headed for North Carolina the next day. In 93, married with kids and tired of seasonal and low-paying jobs, I went back to school and finished my teaching degree in 95. Kim was commuting to Cedar Rapids at the time and our kids were young so I didn't even apply for a job. Instead I did substitute teaching for three years so I could take a day and be with the kids if needed. I worked five days a week, and my days at the Braille School became very frequent. In the fall of 98 the Braille School called me two days before school started and asked if I wanted a teaching job. I took it. At that time they flew in professors from the University of Alabama on weekends to we could get our vision endorsement, and they paid for it all. I've been there ever since, and will retire from there. Sometimes it drives me nuts, but when I'm working directly with kids I love it.

[Tamarack]

Another failed pre-med. I started college thinking I would be a physician or a forest ranger. If a physician, I thought it would be a life of adventure -- missions or remote places such as Cicely, Alaska. During freshman year I lived down the hall from Charlie, who convinced me that geologists were paid well to work outdoors. After Geology 101 and a spring trip to Colorado I was committed. I went into geology because I loved the outdoors and was fascinated with mountains, deserts, glaciers, etc. Now I make my living cleaning up decrepit factories and leaking gas stations and arguing about criteria promulgated under Part 201 of the Michigan Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.

(Charlie never worked as a geologist. He was very sucessful as a co-founder of a microbrewery)

[RickW]

My dad worked for the telephone company for the last 27 years of his life. He died at 57 suddenly when a blood clot from a gall bladder operation hit his heart. I was 19. The telephone company at that time was more family oriented, and offered me a job. I had originally intended on being.... not sure. I wanted to be a rock star. Glad that stopped when it did, I'd be dead. I also figured out that being in a bar band doing covers of pop songs sucked, and our originals were not popular. While working at the telephone company as a mail driver, I started writing. Wrote 6 novels and a plethora of short stories. Sold a few of the stories for peanuts, got a great agent for one of my novels, but it still didn't sell. Started taking night school courses in programming, moved into the telephone company data center as a computer operator. Got picked to take an internal course for union members on programming. Passed that, got a job, being doing it ever since.

I have done a fair bit of free lance writing along the way. I like that better. But I have made a good living with good benefits. I like some of the job. I like the people.

I'm near being able to retire with a pension, to do what I want.

[omaha]

Knocked around college for five years. Two transfers later I ended up with a degree in mechanical engineering. That was 1986, when defense contractor jobs were easy. But I didn't want to do that, so I ended up doing technical economic analysys in Green Bay. A few years later, with our second kid on the way, we decided to move back to Omaha.

Decided to get into programming. Over a period of about ten years I went from being a grunt programmer at a hotel reservation center to President of a successful consulting company to CIO of a venture-funded dot-com.

Got tired of the Dilbert world, so I bought a failing binder plant and turned it around. Why? Mainly because my dad owned a printing company and I had a sense of nostalgia for that.

That was about eight years ago. I'm getting a little itchy.

[mccoyblues]

I didn't decide, it just sort of worked out this way.

I knew immediately college wasn't my thing so after just one semester I dropped out. I never went back. I went through a series of decent jobs but nothing special. I did warehouse work, landscape maintenance, and retail sales. I loved working at the Buick dealer in the Parts Department and I loved driving a delivery truck for the local Mack Truck dealer. I ended up in Miami living with my brother and I got a job managing a record store where I met lisa, my wife.

We eventually moved back to Orlando where I went to work for a camp ground as a handy man. I was tired of the dead end jobs so I enrolled at a technical school to learn this new thing called computer programming. They told me it was going to be the next big thing, lots of job opportunities. While in school I worked at night as a security guard. One of my assignments was the AT&T building where all the lawyers were working on the DOJ case ( divestiture). I got to be friends with quite a few of the AT&T managers working with the lawyers. I let them know I was studying programming and was looking for an opportunity when I graduated. One of them got me an interview and I was lucky enough to pass the entrance exam.

I started working for the "new" AT&T on Jan 1 1984 when the divestiture was official. I've been here ever since.

[Russell Letson]

After my I got out of my first stint in jail (the gun was carved out of licorice, but the judge was in the pocket of the candy manufacturers and suppressed that evidence), I hitched a ride down to Baja Ohio, where a kindly old organ grinder in need of a monkey thought that the costume might fit me. It wasn't a bad gig, but the damn hat kept falling off and I never really mastered the choreography (arms too short, legs too long), so he canned me. Gave me a nice fruit basket as a severance package, though. By the time I'd eaten the last guava, I was pretty hard up and hanging out in alleys, so I took to refurbushing old fax machines and dot-matrix printers I found in dumpsters behind dot-com startups. This didn't work out too well, either, since it was only 1965 and the refurb market for uninvented tech was pretty thin and the RS-232 protocol was still in flux. I had managed to learn enough about the devices that I could write about them, though, at least for a completely clueless audience, so when the magazine was invented, I was in a position to finally make my move. I found an editor who knew even less about business technologies than his readership did, and pretty soon my gross was in the high two figures nearly every year. But the expenses were eating me alive, and I found that I made more money if I just cut out the earning part. The magazine made that easy when it was acquired by a media company and turned into a naughty-housewives website. Again, a limited grasp of choreography was my downfall. After a period of rugged outdoor life and restricted diet, I was eventually able to find a use for my prison experiences when I started grad school. Working in the English Department laundry was like coming home, and when they made me a trusty I knew I'd finally found my place in the world. I specialized in getting the smell of gin out of Oxford-cloth shirts and freshening up the nap on suede elbow patches. Once a month I was allowed to attend poetry readings and showings of foreign-language films, unless there were subtitles. I published a slim volume of erotic haiku (there are still several boxes in the basement--any offers entertained) and a monograph on the role of sweets in crime fiction. I still get Christmas cards from the organ-grinder.

[brucemacneill]

After doing surveying and drafting work in Vietnam at 120 degrees and then the same at McMurdo Station, Antarctica at no degrees or less, I was sitting in the office at McMurdo reading an old Boston Globe waiting to get out of the Navy and noticed that a draftsman in electronics was paid better than a civil engineer, around 10K for the C.E. and 14K for the electronic draftsman, I changed directions. When I was discharged, I took a job with the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Works just long enough to get into an Electronic Engineering program. After graduating, took the first job I could get with a computer manufacturer and just stuck with it long enough to retire. When in Massachusetts I always go look at the last road I put in and it's still there and the drainage still works but life in a cubical or computer room was a lot more comfortable.