OT: Calling all straight F students..., Don't ever give up Options

[BigD9146gt]

I was never good at homework. I liked being in school learning, just never could remember any of it when the time came to barf it back to the teacher. This is an email my old man sent me, he's a pretty sucessful mechanical engineer who also didn't do all that well in school. Enjoy.

Charles Kettering invented no knock self-starter, diesel locomotive and paint for cars.

Intelligent Ignorance:

The more education you have the less likely you are to become an inventor. The reason why is this: from the time a kid starts Kindergarten to the time he graduates from college, he will be examined two or three times a year and if he flunks once, he’s out. Now an inventor fails 999 times and if he succeeds once, he’s in. An inventor treats his failures simply as practice shots.

He believed a problem was more than willing to be solved provided the researcher remembered who was boss, by which he meant the problem, not himself. The only difference between a problem and a solution, he used to say, is that people understand the solution. Solutions only involve a change in perception, since the solution must have existed all along with the problem itself. A researcher, he argued, was there not to master the problem but to make it give birth to its solution.

[TravisNeff]

I had to go back 3 times to finish High School. I thought hanging out with my friends and getting a full time job as a cook was more fun. Instant gratification. I am not stupid - just never applied myself when I should have. I look back and see that doing better in school would have done wonders for myself. Self esteem, first real glimpse at working hard at something where the payoff is far down the road. I wish I would have done more in math, math is cool and is whupass tool for problem solving and analysis.

But I learned a ton going the OJT route and bettered myself along the way. I work for an engineering/consulting firm in I.T. been here for 9 years. I make more than a few of the engineers with a lot of schooling, and a lot of hard work. I can say that I accomplished more than I thought I would have. I have also known people with outstanding education and they are dumber than a stump in the real world. I would also say that about 40% or more of people that I meet with a college education are not working in the field that they studied.

But yesterday I found out that I am being moved to a flex position rather than full time at the end of the month. We have been overstaffed in my office for a couple years, and as a senior and high paid tech I am financially expendable. I guess it is a blessing in disguise, I am burned out and it is time for a new job or even a new career path. Maybe doing something that I am interested in, rather than just for pay. Now is the time that I kick myself for not getting a degree. It's hard to sell yourself without it. But I have enough real world experience that makes up for a bunch if not all - just have to have the interviewer look further than my education on my resume. (also not laugh that I did it in purple crayon).