How I became an engineer
For those of you who've been reading my bleatings for the past bunch of years, much of this will be familiar. But for the rest of you lot, I'll go into details.

Let me start out by saying that, despite having an adequate level of intelligence, I've always been a crap student. I've never been one for getting an A in my classes- I'm more in the B range at best, most of the time. Add to this the fact that at the age of 18 I had no earthly clue as to what I wanted to do in life... well, I needed to figure that out, didn't I?

So at 18 I went to college for electronics. I had a pretty good idea of how to work with electricity, so it seemed logical. That is, until I got to AC circuits and Boolean algebra and a few other things that made my head asplode. I plodded along, knew I would never make it, and quit.

The next few years were spent doing menial jobs and being flat-ass broke. I've chronicled some of those times here already, so I won't get into details.

At 23 I was convinced to try forestry. Newly married, I went to school to become a lumberjack- well, not really, I wanted to be a park ranger. Still, one of those guys who spends all his days outdoors wearing wool and being rugged. Only thing is, park jobs are next to impossible to get unless you want to work on Staten Island or some such, or unless you have a Master's degree. Forestry jobs of the sort I wanted- research into reforestation- also required at least a Master's, and would have you start out picking up pine cones for minimum wage. Also, Nurse Ratched didn't want to move away from upstate NY as all her family was there. So I did the only logical thing- I went into land surveying.

Only problem with being a surveyor: if the markets are bad, no one wants their property surveyed. We starved a bit for a time, until I got the idea of moving to Virginia and doing civil engineering as a draftsman. So off we went.

Well, if you don't have PE after your last name (Professional Engineer), you ain't shit. I found I was in a dead-end job with crap pay and bosses who liked to dump blame down onto those below them- namely, the drafters.

Not nice.

About the time I realized how utterly fucked I was, my grandmother died at the age of 102. While I was sad about this, her mind had been gone for a decade or more, so it was actually a relief- I mean, imagine the smartest person you had ever met becoming a vegetable. So while her death was a blow, it merely meant that her body had finally joined her.

The thing is, Grandma only had two kids- Mom and her brother. Her entire estate was divided between them. As both she and Grandpa had been doctors, and Grandma had invested heavily in the stock market in the early 1980s, when she died in 1997 she was a very wealthy woman. So Mom got this whopping windfall.

What did she do with it? She offered to send me back to college. What did I want to do?

Holy shit.

Mom paid my tuition, my books, and made up for my lost income. All I had to do was study. So I selected mechanical engineering.

It was five years of fucking hell, with Nurse Ratched hating that I was in college while she worked- she thought I was taking a four year vacation- but I ground through it. Nearly failed out during the divorce, got lousy grades, seriously contemplated suicide, but somehow I made it despite my ex. And Mom supported me through the whole thing.

My home life is still rocky as hell, but thanks to Mom I have a job as an engineer and can afford a decent house for my kids and food. Had Mom not invested what must have been about fifty grand in me, things would be far more dire about now...

I don't know that I can ever pass that act of kindness on to my kids, but if I can I certainly will.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 2 Oct 2008, 20:44, 7 replies)

*click*
yay for mums. Yay for your determination to get there in the end as well.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 2 Oct 2008, 20:51, closed)

My only regret at not being a mum is I wont be able to do things like this.
But I do have a nephew so he's sorted for life.
( girlinthehole, Thu 2 Oct 2008, 20:54, closed)

Is it possible....?
That your mum (note the spelling) sent you back to college to get you out of the house and she couldn't stand the sight of you? ;O) *click*
(The Stig, Thu 2 Oct 2008, 20:56, closed)

Heh. I know that's not it.
Mom lives 600 miles from me, and only sees me a couple of times a year.

No, she wanted me to go to college so I wouldn't have to worry over money as much. And for a fact if I had stayed married to Nurse Ratched, if she had not gone so far around the bend, right about now I'd be quite well off. But as it stands, I've enough to survive on for the time being...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 2 Oct 2008, 20:58, closed)

Hurrah!
Mums are great, aren't they?
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Thu 2 Oct 2008, 21:15, closed)

mums are lovely.
Whereabouts are you nowadays? Hope the rest of it goes swimmingly for the Loon.
(Lurkaloid awarded wanking black belt on, Fri 3 Oct 2008, 16:55, closed)

They are indeed.
I'm in Virginia, but get home to NY now and then to see Mom. And this Thanksgiving will be spent in Myrtle Beach SC with them...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 3 Oct 2008, 19:47, closed)