While talking with another grexer who is wondering how to choose a major, a
college, and a career, I started reminiscing about how I ended up in my
career.  Now I wonder how other grexers have decided what to study and what
sort of work to do.  How did you choose a major, and for those who are now
working, how did you end up in your present career (or past careers) - was
it all carefully planned out, did you drift into it, was it the result of a
summer job, or a complete accident?  If you switched careers, how and why?
If you could, would you choose the same career again or a different one?  If
you are not working yet, how do you go about choosing what to work at?

67 responses total.

I've been interested in computers since I was 12, in 1973.  My dad 
wanted to discuss career options with me while I was in high school, and 
suggested I consider engineering as a career.  So, I went to Michigan 
Tech to study computer engineering.  I was horrible at calculus -- I was 
generally a horrible student, but especially bad at calculus -- and so I 
transferred to scientific and technical communications.  If I couldn't 
program or design computers, I figured I'd write manuals about them.

Time passed -- really a lot of time, I was in and around college for 8 
years -- and I gave it up, and moved back in with my folks, knowing 
nothing marketable.  This was about 10 years ago.  Computer jobs in the 
Lansing area were pretty well nonexistent; that's still what I was 
interested in.  The Merit dial-out modems were still in operation, and 
so I was connecting to many of the AA area BBSes, particularly M-Net.  
Under heavy pressure from my parents to get out of their house, I 
discussed applying my rudimentary Unix knowledge with the sysop of one 
BBS, called Tech Net.  The sysop was Terry Weadock of Dominant Systems.  
I was desperate for a job, he was interested in someone who would work 
very cheap, and so I launched my career in computers.

I learned a lot there, about how PC hardware works, and about Unix 
through the vehicle of SCO Xenix.  When Dominant Systems decided I 
wasn't worth much as a support manager, they canned me, but the 
background I got there got me into a technical support job.  I learned 
how to do technical support, and that has kept me eating for the last 8 
or 9 years.

I'm also interested in how people find their career.  I don't know many 
people who went to college, studied something, and stayed with that for 
the rest of their life.  The twists and turns of a lifetime are hard to 
plan in advance.

I have no idea what I would seek to do now, if I had to change careers 
and couldn't find a niche that was basically using computers.  If I was 
enough of a student to acquire a degree, I think library science would 
be a great field to be in.  I'd enjoy doing work in linguistics, though 
I don't know how one goes about getting a job doing it (except as a 
professor).

I'd been playing with computers off and on for years, by the time I got my
first modem when I was 14.  I started calling into a BBS one of my friends
was running, but got kind of bored of that.  Then somebody told me about Grex,
and I started playing around here a lot, and learning a lot about computers.
Eventually I got to the point where I was spending far more time playing with
computers than doing my homework.  Then I got a job working for the UM in my
senior year of high school.  My job itself was pretty boring, but they had
lots of cool computer stuff and a nice fast Net connection, so I started
spending most of my free time, and most of the time I should have been doing
homework, at the place where I worked playing with things.

Needless to say, when it got to the point of figuring out where to go to
college, I didn't have the grades to get into anywhere I was actually
interested in going.  That was ok, since I was feeling burned out enough on
school that I probably wouldn't have lasted long in college anyway.  I decided
to try to get a job doing something computer related, since it was an area
I was interested in and I had a lot of the skills to do it.  I got a job at
a company that does software and computer consulting for law firms, and
started doing all sorts of stuff there.  I was finding that what I was really
interested in was networking stuff, and especially Internet server and router
stuff.  I was starting to get to the point there where I wasn't interested
in a lot of the other stuff I was doing there, and then somebody that company
had been renting office space from knew the guy who owns the company I work
for now, and suggested that we talk to eachother.

Somewhere there must be somebody in computers who actually got a degree in
it. Regarding linguistics jobs (#1), I actually got degrees in linguistics
and there were no professor jobs to even apply for.  I am also doing work that
did not require a degree, just an interest and knowledge (translating),
although much of the knowledge came from school.  More later.

  I know a number of people with degrees in computer science or computer
  engineering but I probably know more people working with computers who
  either have no degree or have a degree in a totally unrelated subject
  (for instance, forestry, film studies, english literature, music -- all
  people I've worked with..)

  When I left home to go to college I didn't really know what I wanted to
  study and hadn't even narrowed it down all that much:  computer science,
  physics, mathematics, and philosophy were my top contenders.  After a
  term or two of classes heavily loaded on the first three I decided to
  focus on computers but I wasn't really happy with the education I was
  receiving so after floundering for a while I quit school and took a
  computer job.  After six or seven years in various system administrator
  positions I got pretty bored with that and returned to school to complete
  my bachelor's degree in computer enginnering which is where I am now..
  I still haven't got the faintest idea what I'd like to do for the rest
  of my life though a couple of years in the work force have taught me a
  lot about what I *don't* want.  I'll report back if I ever *do* choose
  a career and have anything useful to say about how I arrived at the 
  decision.

I've wanted to be a teacher since I was in the first grade; I played "school"
with my brother every weekend and taught him the alphabet, his numbers, and
his colors before he got to kindergarten.  As I got older, I kept this love
for teaching other people how to do things and helping them with their
homework assignments.  I was often picked to help peers learn how to read when
I was in lower elementary grades and often helped with spelling.  When I got
into high school, I narrowed down my major to History, Biology, or English.
As of my senior year, it became a double major in English and Spanish with
a minor in History.  I had three *wonderful* English teachers and a *fabulous*
AP English/Literature teacher during my senior year of high school, and they
convinced me that Literature and Writing were my two loves.  When I started
college, I was Secondary Ed/English with a minor in History.  Now, I've
dropped the education major, and I'm focusing on English as a masters degree
(bachelors in Medieval History).  I've decided that I want to teach at the
college level, and you aren't required to have a Secondary Ed. degree for that
since it's considered post-secondary.  You only need your masters or doctorate
to teach at most colleges in Michigan.  I have to research this in Colorado,
since I'll be doing my graduate work there (boyfriend is stationed at Fort
Carson in Colorado Springs), but I think it's about the same.

I have always loved reading and writing, and I want to share that with others
and help others learn more in areas that they struggle in.  I'm addicted to
the look people get on their face when they finally "get" something or
understand it, and to get paid to do this is simply a dream.  I love when
people ask me to help them with a paper they're writing or ask me to proofread
something.  I love explaining how to do something or why it's a certain way.
Teaching is something I've always wanted to do.  =)

As for a linguistics degree the fellow who taught my first programming class
has his degree in linguistics. Now he teaches about programming and computers.

Linguistics to computing seems to be a natural segue. Larry Wall,
the author of the PERL programming language and various substantial
pieces of software, is a linguist by education.

My segue was from mathematics to computer science. By the time I
got out of high school I'd decided that I wanted to be a mathema-
tician. All of my degrees, from bachelor's through Ph.D., are in
math. In the early 1970's, while teaching in a university math
department, I started getting interested in computers. The shift
of interested was aided and abetted by my department, which was
starting a computer science major. I taught courses in both fields
for a time, but by the early 1980's I was full time in computer
science and have been ever since.

Which fields require that you have a degree in them to actually work in them,
other than most teaching, and medical?   Is computer science anomalous in
allowing people to teach themselves the subject, or are there many other
fields that you can get into that way?  Theater?

My career was based in a hobby of chemistry that started when I was age 8.
I chose to go into chemical engineering by the time I entered high school and
then into that program at MIT. After obtaining my Sc.D. in ChE I worked
in a chemical company for 6 years and then, after a hiatus, joined academia
in ChE. Sounds pretty linear, though it has been exciting and fullfilling.

My father also studied to be a chemical engineer (at Northeastern, MIT was
too expensive and he worked his way through), had a summer job in a bubble
gum factory, and eventually landed a job as a marine engineer checking ship
plans for the government during the war.  (He also checked plans for the ice
cream freezers on the ships).  But what he really enjoyed was writing, he
would have like to be a technical writer.  I have a few things he saved with
red ink all over them, so it looks like he made the best of his job.  After
the shipyard moved south without him, he worked for his brother's deli and
had a lot of fun writing up menus and advertising, then got a part-time job
at a bookstore owned by a friend (who had also studied to be an engineer, but
got into the retail business while selling magazine subscriptions as a summer
job.)   My brother fell into computer programming after dropping out of
college because he was too busy playing with computers.  After a few boring
civil service jobs, someone in his chorus offered him a job cataloguing the
computer library at a shoe factory, and he worked his way up, and eventually
got a degree in order not to waste the free tuition offered by another job.
(I think he still has an enormous collection of half-price shoes.)

i have never taken any classes of any kind in theatre.  i make my living as
a theatrical technician.  i work as a regular (part-time, classified as
temporary) house technician at the university of michigan theatres (Power
Center, Mendelssohn, Hill Aud. and Rackham Aud, and rarely, Trueblood), as
a freelance technical director and designer with numerous local groups, and
as a professional stagehand.  everything i know about my work i have learned
from either reading about it or doing it.

i attended Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, but dropped out prior
to declaring my major.  i was headed for a major in Cognitive Science, for
no other reason than that it was the only field broad enough to emcompass my
interests (or so it seemed).

what i really like about the theatre is that in a sense it contains all the
diverse aspects of life, but on a smaller scale.  it is a microcosm, in the
truest sense.  every show has unique elements, unique history, and unique
technical requirements, dependin upon the director, the script and the budget.
always something different, usually something interesting.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is an Sc.D?  I've never heard of that...  Is
it like a Ph.D?

  Science v. Philosophy..

I have no career as of yet, and I really dont' know what I want to do.  It's
an interesting perspective.

Sc.D. = Doctor of Science. It was in effect the Ph.D. offered by MIT to
engineers, for many years. They quit doing it and now have only PhDs. But
it's what is on my piece of paper....

Thanks!

I have an A. B. not a B. A.  (probably the Latin word order).
Is Rane the only one reading this item who actually has a degree in the field
he is still working in?  

I have a B. Eng. in Electrical Engineering.  While I don't work as an
engineer in that I don't design stuff anymore, I'd say that I'm still
working in the field.  What I do now is write articles about electronics
technology and the testing of electronics equipment.

How did you decide to go into Electrical Engineering, and how did you end up
writing instead of designing?  Do you enjoy that more?  Who do you write
articles for, and would the have hired you without a B. Eng.?

I first got interested in computer in high school chemistry class.  The kid
next to me (Benno Bluminthal, now an oceanographer or marine biologist or
something like that) was doing archane scribblings an a scrap of paper.  I
asked him what he was doing.  He said he was trying to figure out how to write
the shortest possible program to print out a picture of the American flag.
I thought that this was a fascinating puzzle to be working on, and for the
first time got interested in computers.  Previously I'd figured they were only
good for managing payrolls and printing out invoices and boring things like
that.  So I took my high school's computer class the next term.  They had two
teletypes connected to an HP9000F someplace far away.  The class was tiny -
maybe ten kids out of the thousands in that school.  But I decided it was a
heck of a lot of fun.  So I went to the UofM to start studying computer
engineering.  Eleven years later I had three degrees in computer engineering
(bachelors, masters, PhD) and had discovered that doing computer research was
even more fun than just writing programs.  I'd published about a half dozen
papers on CAD, robotics, and computational geometry, all of which I got into
because I had a bent toward geometric stuff.  Since I was very happy as a
graduate student, I became a professor in the only PhD granting institution
that offered me a job - Texas A&M.  I rather liked being a professor, and did
lots of research and got a fair amount of research funding.  I started doing
AI systems and numerical simulations and oil-spill clean-up applications as
well as robotics, computer-aided design and CAD.  Meanwhile I taught courses
in programming, analysis, AI and computer graphics.  So I worked on everything
that caught my fancy, taught whatever needed teaching, and chased down just
enough funding to support a reasonable number of grad students.  I enjoyed
myself and I think I did good work, but I kind of missed the profile that the
deans were looking for.  The deans wanted people who'd focus on one area, pump
out lots of incremental papers on the same subject, and bring in as much
research money as they possibly could (even if they didn't have enough time
left over to actually do anything sensible with it).  They declared that I
"didn't hustle enough" and denied me tenure.  I decided that if there was a
University around that didn't want it's faculty to be either (1) teaching too
many courses or (2) chasing too much money, then there was probably no chance
of getting into them.  What I saw of corporate research labs struck me as
mostly grim - there are a few fun ones, but not many and those are hard to
get into.  So I decided that consulting was my best chance to have lots of
flexibility to play around with things that are interesting without being tied
down too much.  It works pretty well, but I'd kind of like to do some part
time teaching too.

When I passed my 10th standard exam, I had 2 choices : Biology Main or
Maths Main. Since I hated Bilogy more than I hated Maths, I chose
M. After the 12th standard exam, every guy in my class was trying
to get into some engineering course. I too wrote the entrance exam.
Since my score was pretty good, I had the choice of selecting
any course I liked. Since most of the top rankers were taking
Computer Engg, I too did that. By the time I got my Bachelor's degree,
I was tired of studying. So I went to work for a private firm -- they
were basically hardware vendors. Since the money was not
good, I quit there and joined my current job -- this is a
government organisation developing low cost telecom switches
mainly for India and the developing countries. I am doing software
development here -- my degree is in the same area as my work.

I wonder if it is at all common in India for people to study some subject in
college and then work at something else.  I would guess not, it is not like
here where everyone goes to college and then decides what to do.

When I was little and people asked me what I wanted to do I said teach, which
made them happy. I have since discovered I am not a good teacher - not enough
patience, and I get bored teachging the same thing twice.
As child I collected postage stamps, not for the picutres but for the words.
In high school I was interested in sciences, but also took German and Latin
for fun, and Russian after school.  I was a science major in college.  I
enjoyed the chemistry theory but got sick in the labs.  At a summer lab job
I got bored trying to run someone els'e experiemnt which never worked. 
ANother summer job was copying titles of Russia articles over in Roman
alphabet, which for some reason I enjoyed.  I also took more Russian, German,
some Ancient Greek, and linguistics for fun.  I applied to grad school in food
wscience, botany, and Russian linguistics and got scholarships for the
Russian.  I did not enojoy being a teaching assistant, but kept translating
and continued in grad school.  I lived in former Yugoslavia for a while and
learned a lot about people, and a few more languages, and did dissertation
research.  There were no teaching jobs to apply for, so I kept translating
part time while writing the thesis (which I never finished), and am still
translating.  I have done a lot of chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology,
medical reports, and all sorts of technical miscellany, and find it a great
deal of fun, sort of like crossword puzzles.  I don't mind the erratic income,
and prefer to work at home, keep my own hours, and meet all sorts of
interesting people over the phone.  But it gets a bit lonely.  I would rather
read about other people's research than do my own, which can get pretty dull,
as well as make me sick from the chemical fumes.  I also run little
experiments in the kitchen (we made tofu and tortillas, from the whole seeds)
and the garden, and use my biochem degree to impress people in grex with odd
facts in the health and other conferences.
I never paid much attention to what I would do for a living while a student,
just took what was interesting.  I am using a surprising amount of what I
studied, but what is taught is not very related to what is applied.
        Are there other jobs that actually require a degree besides law,
medicine and teaching?  Do engineers all need a degree?
        How did people in health care choose their careers?  What percentage
of health care professional are more interested in helping people than in the
money?

You cannot get a job in engineering in any large company without a degree.
However some engineers - and others in many other professions - "back into"
the work in small companies, or their own companies, by just getting involved
in <engineering>-type work (fill in the < > yourself), and eventually for
all practical purposes they are engineers. Of course, with more education,
you have even more flexibility. I've never had a course in statistics but
I have taught statistics at the graduate level. 

Law, medicine and K-12 teaching require certification, which requires a
certain amount of courses and a related degree. A number of other
professions require certification for certain kinds of work. For example,
engineers have to be certificated by a professional board to work for
government (e.g., civil engineers working for a city or the state). 

  do they?  my brother works as a civil engineer for the army corps of
  engineers and I don't recall him having to go through a special
  certification procedure (other than holding a degree from MTU.)  he's
  taking the PE exam but I thought I was told that that was a seperate
  matter..

The army is not civilian government - sorry I wasn't specific enough. However
none of those army "engineers" are licensed to do civilian engineering work.
He is probably taking the PE exam so he can get a job when he leaves the
army. 

  he's not in the army, he works for the army corps of engineers which
  is a totally different thing.  he's overseeing superfund cleanup at
  polluted sites..

Hmmm.
At school (first high school and after that, let my try to find some
understandable term: prep scientific school (something like that)), I did
fairly well in most languages. In Holland one does exams in six subjects and
in prep in seven subjects, which in my case it was mandatory to add a subject
to the existing package. That0s the way it goes overhere. My subjects were:
english, dutch, math, physics, chemistry, economics, and biology. Since
biology had always been my favorite, I chose that subject to study at the
university.
When you go to a Dutch university to study a subject, that's the line of
subjects you get. It is fairly impossible to do something like history next
to biology unless you start another study, in this example history. This goes
of course for all subjects.
So after four years hanging above my microscope and behind all kinds of
equipment I finally did my first university degree. Now, the dictionary came
up with some abbreviations which I don0t know. My title either was at that
time, B.A.; B.Sc. or L.L.B.
What does that all mean?
What am I according to american standards?
After this I went for my doctorate but quit university in my final year. By
quiting I meant being a student, since I refused conscription and did
alternative work at the university library. After a couple of years I did a
course in order to become a librarian, which I am doing still today.

The army corps of engineers is, in any case, not a municipal government and
not subject to state laws for hiring employees. This is one reason, by
the way, for the many disastrous projects of the ACE (read "Dams and other
Disasters").

Re 27.  B. A. Bachelor of Arts is the usual American college degree, but
requires a lot of courses not related to the major.  B. S. Bachelor of Science
(B. Sc. may be British) sounds like what you have.  Don't know LLB (law?)
Engineers here get B. S.  (I got A. B., my college wanted to be different).
A friend of mine with most of a doctorate in linguistics decided he liked
libraryies, got an M. A., then a low-level job, which he still has.  He likes
being able to read books at work, and does not care about the pay.  How do
most librarians end up in that field?

LLB is "Bachelor of Law" (its Latin equivalent)

Do we have an equivalent of Bachelor of Law?  I think law school is longer
for us, requires an undergrad degree first, then some sor tof doctor degree.
Any lawyers among us?

Our respective educational systems remain a trifle obscure.
But at least I know what I am worth, and that's not much at Dutch job-market.
All the fun jobs require doctorates, and since our society is fixed on
official little documents I canb shake it.
Being a librarian to me, as a means to pay the rent, haha.
Nah, the atmosphere, genrally in my work environment is very relaxed and there
are virtually no backstabbers around who are after your job, which doesn't
pay too much.

My degree is a B.S. The funny thing is it's in theater arts.

COuld you have got a B. A. in Theater Arts by taking a few different courses?
I had the impression a B. S. was scanty on history and literature.

The B.S. lets him change light bulbs...   ;)

How many Montenegrins does it take to change a lightbulb?  Three.....

in the theatre, you don't "change the light bulb,"  you "relamp the
instrument."
<grin>

Heh.  

  and apparently you also affect a british spelling of "theater"..

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss