Who have I been? [LONG]

Journal pythorlh's Journal: Who have I been? [LONG] 15

Journal by pythorlh on Monday October 23, 2006 @04:18PM

This is very personal and probably not too bright of an idea. I may get the urge to delete the entry, so I apologize in advance to any commenters if that happens. That said, I've had the urge to put this up, so here you are:

Let's start at high school graduation. At this point in my life, I wanted to be a chip designer. I have no idea why I wanted to design computer chips, but I did. I desperately wanted to get into MIT or Carnegie Melon, but I didn't. Probably my lacadaisical attitude toward grades was the problem. I also was definitely not interested in the one college that would accept me, which was href="http://www.kettering.edu/">GMI, now know as Kettering University. This was basically based on the fact that my parents wanted me to go there, it was a business college, not a technical college, and they had no internships available for me (Internships were the one decent draw GMI had.).
So, local community college it is, then. FMCC, the local community college for my community. Work at the local retail store, go to class.
Except that class was boring. I was not really interested in my Elec Tech classes, because I had learned all of what they were teaching in high school physics. I had a very good HS physics teacher. I also disliked colege physics, for the same reason. Math was fun my first semester. Calc 3, because I had taken the AP exam and tested out of Calc 1 and 2. English was acceptable, with a good English professor. That semester I failed both my Elec Tech classes and Physics, due to not completing lab assignments. I did the labs, but never wrote them up. Late in this semester I got my first girlfriend, who worked (for my mother) at the retail store.
Second semester was more of the same. I continued with ET and Physics, because at this point I had "Incomplete" in the first semester courses, and if I turned in the missing work I could have passed them. 2nd Semester English sucked, with a lousy prof. Math was half and half, one good professor and one lousy, but I managed both. Late in this semester, my girlfriend was pregnant, and we were planning a wedding.
No school that fall. Wedding plans came and went. Finally, on Sunday October 11th, Toni told me that we were getting married that Thursday, and we did. (6 year seperation aside, my 14th anniversary was a week ago Sunday.) Moved into a two bedroom rent-assisted apartment, and started working full time. My son was born the next January, and two weeks later, I quit my job. This was due to a profound lack of respect that my boss showed me, but it worked out. Two days later I was called for a factory job I had applied for, and I started working for Hasbro.
A year and a half later, I have my second son, and two months after that I lose my job at Hasbro. I had a lot of missed time at Hasbro. I hated the job. I went to a psychiatrist paid for by their employee counseling center, and found out that I have ADD. It was no contest. In September of that year, I got pnumonia. Two weeks out of work, and the antibiotics didn't work so they switched them to something stronger, and two more weeks out. The day I was supposed to report back to work, my wife got sick, and I had to stay home with the children. Hasbro told me not to bother coming back. Thus began two years of unemployment. Food Stamps and Welfare for two years. I hated it. Most of this time was spent dragging my wife (and sometimes children) to various doctors and hospitals. No one could figure out what is wrong with her, and we went through dozens of nights in the emergency room. Partway through this period, my third son was born.
We had reached the point that Welfare was not really able to support us, and my wife had given up on doctors, so I was back looking for work right after my son was born. I got a call from Kelly services, to interview for a position with the local phone company as an operator.
Or not. Actually, the phone company needed people for their long distance department. I was hired, and got to attend several weeks of training and become a "switch provisioning rep." Which basically was data entry, but there was a lot of technical work, and I learned a good deal. The job was 3 to 12, so I signed up at FMCC for morning courses.
This time around, I was taking Computer Science. No decent programming courses, all intro stuff that was on the required class list. Also, second semester English again (I had failed it before, for lack of work.) COBOL was acceptable, if also boring. Intro to Accounting to round it out. And three weeks into the semester I get moved to day shifts. I try rearrange my school schedule, but it doesn't work, and I have to quit. I did get a break, and my instructor let me test out of my CS classes.
Two years later, I'm still a "temp" employee for the phone company. I've started taking over the responsibilities of my supervisor, and I've generally shown myself to be a good worker. The company announces that my job will be moved to Dallas. My whole department is given the opportunity to move, and I'm told that if I don't take the opportunity, I'll lose my job. As a "temp" employee, I'm not in the union, see. Union workers will be transferred to other departments, but I'm SOL.
I discuss with my wife. She hates the idea, but agrees to it, since it means going permenant, and getting a raise. So we decide to do it. Meanwhile, several Dallas employees come to my office for training. The one who is supposed to learn switch provisioning is quite inept. All of the people they sent to us for training had very poor work ethics, but she was terrible. We gave her an extra two weeks of training and she still couldn't grasp the job. This woman was under the impression that she would be the supervisor of the switch group when she returned to Dallas. My boss through a fit. She told them that under no circumstance could they make this woman the supervisor, and that if they wanted a decent supervisor, it would be me. This was not taken well. In the end, the switch group was the only group that had no supervisor when we moved to Dallas. Officially, we reported directly to the VP of long distance, while we generally went to one of the other supervisors when it was needed.
The move to Dallas itself was uneventful. However, during this time, my wife changed her mind, and wanted to not move at all. She did come with me, but we argued a lot. Once we got to Dallas, she got a job at Wal-Mart, and spending more time out with friends than home. At work, the woman who didn't get the supervisor job was constantly complaining about me. Her main complaint was that I wasn't doing my share of the day to day work. This was generally true, because while I hadn't been given the supervisor position, I was given the technical (as opposed to HR) responsibilties of supervisor, and spent most of my time on those. That December, the day after Christmas, and 3 months after I moved to Dallas, my wife was attacked after work. She was hysterical, and wanted to "go home." I drove her back to NY, which put me in the middle of a blizzard. It took more than a week for me to get back to Dallas. I called work to make sure they knew what was going on. When I got back, I was told that I had one chance. If I missed any time in the next 6 months, I would be fired. Three weeks later, I was an hour late. Two days after that, I was fired.
The next several months were spent in various temporary jobs. I worked for MCI, as an assistant to the IS department doing data migration to new laptops. I worked for Sprint as the executive assistant to a VP. I worked for BankOne as a data entry clerk. Also during this time, my wife and I were effectively seperated. We lived in the same house, but she got a boyfriend and spent more time out of the house than in it. She also jumped around to several different jobs. She got an apartment in her name, which I ended up moving into when I couldn't pay my rent.
Just before September, I told her I was taking the children back to NY. I hadn't had a job offer in three weeks, and I had an offer at a retail store in NY run by the manager I had worked for when I got married. She agreed to come with us.
We lived with family for a time, and got back together. I worked, and she stayed home. She was sick most of the time again. I don't remember why or when I stopped working this time. Eventually, my fourth son was born. I was out of work for a while, looking for work but not really finding anything that could support the family. I applied several times at the phone company, but never got called.
A couple months after my son was born, I was told that the welfare program would pay for me to return to college, since I couldn't qualify for a job that would support 6 of us. Their last request was that I apply for the phone company again, since they were hiring. This time, I was hired. My wife and I had just split up, and I had moved out of our apartment.
This time I was working for the local phone department. I went through training, and was selected to join the business customer service group. A few months later, I was moved into the "offline" group. This group did special projects, and I was a troubleshooter of sorts. I bounced around a bit in my assigned position, eventually ending up as a dedicated rep for large customers in the midwest. I was also assigned as a tester for several large projects that were being done, and spent some time traveling to the corporate offices in Rochester.
I applied for several company jobs in the Rochester area. I seldom got even a call back, but I did get an interview for a business analyst position. I spoke with my wife, and she agreed that if I had to move to Rochester, I should agree to take the job, and she would come with me, to keep the kids close. I took the job, and was scheduled to start in Rochester on Jan 30th. My wife then changed her mind, and decided to stay in our home town.
I spent 6 months living in Rochester. Every weekend, I drove 3 hours each way to spend time with my children at my parents house. After 6 months, it was too much. I was months behind on my car payments, and struggling just to pay rent. I told my boss that I really couldn't do it any more. Luckily, I had proven myself in that time, and they allowed me to keep my position and work out of the local office. I still work there today.
I spend a lot of time doing things that a lot of my co-workers don't do. I have taken to using python programs and SQL queries to accomplish projects on my own that other analysts need programmers for. I know that my bosses are very happy with that. They will occasionaly make remarks about wanting my coworkers to become more technical, and use me as an example. Unfortunately, this does create some tension within the group. One co-worker in particular has mentioned perhaps finding another job instead of having to become more technical. In her words "I'm pretty sure I never said I want to be a programmer when I grow up."
I'm not sure where to go next. I want to be a programmer full-time. I don't have the money or the time to get the degree I need for that to really be pratical. I enjoy my job, but I think it's a kind of dead end careerwise.

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