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Sunday, April 01, 2007
One Of The Smartest Things I Ever Did
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One of my favorite bloggers is Mike Sigers of The Simplenomics Blog. I discovered a link to a nice post on The Self Help Blog that I think is a great idea. The author encourages bloggers everywhere to write a post titled “One Of The Smartest Things I Ever Did” (you must leave out getting married or having kids, as that is a given for many).
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http://selfhelpdaily.com/one-of-the-smartest-things-i-ever-did-was/
One of the Smartest Things I Ever Did Was…
March 28th, 2007 · 2 Comments
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But I’m even a firmer believer in sharing with others. Whether it’s clothing, money, food, or advice – we should never hold onto anything that could help another person. That’s why I thought of an idea that might be kind of cool. If you have a blog, I propose that you do this: In an upcoming post, write about One of the Smartest Things You Ever Did. Then, encourage your readers to do the same.
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One of the smartest things I ever did was instill a love of reading in my daughters. They have been very, very successful in their studies and they score way above average on any test set in front of them. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that they’ve always been voracious readers.
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This challenge was relatively easy.
In High School, I was open to take a chance. Took it, did well, and it set me in a “rut” / “groove” for the rest of my life.
When I was in Manhattan Prep High School, one of the Christian Brothers from Manhattan College came in towards the end of my junior year and said he was interested in hiring some of us to work in the Manhattan College data center. To qualify, we had to learn something called a “computer language”. He’d teach us for an hour in the morning before class, we’d have to give up our lunch, and a few Saturdays. After 6 weeks of torture, we’d have an exam. He’d hire the top people for his datacenter at the stunning sum of $4 an hour. (It was a long time ago!). We could then have up to forty hours a week assuming we got working papers. (I already had my for my various summer jobs. My Mom thought “idle hands”! And I got to keep HALF of what I earned. I called her share GRAFT! The split was AFTER tax. Any wonder I HATE taxes!) Despite all my peers telling me I was nuts to “give up” all that time, I signed up. (Surprising since I was very subject to peer pressure.) I was motivated by the money! I jumped thru his hoops, and surprise surprise, despite being a smart but mediocre student, I was the top scorer in his test with a 98. I later learned that this was CDC’s Systems Programmming Test, CDC used to decide if they would allow customers to touch their operating system. The Brother had only gotten a 96 on it. (I still think the question I missed was ambiguous. And, told everyone why! NO good.) From there it was like I was in a groove. I made lots of money, met the Engineering Faculty of the College, decided to go Electrical Engineering, and was the Number #2 guru of the computer center. Sophomore Year of College, I met the fellow running the AT&T Treasury datacenter and found out that they were paying $14/hour. So I started to do both. I graduated (surprisingly) with the lowest index 2.0106 [It was the 6 that won!], won the anchor pool (~$400), and had the highest starting salary (AT&T made my a Senior Systems Programmer making 65k PLUS OVERTIME!?!) I was happy. The best time in my life! It set me on a path that I have been following ever since. I wonder how things would have been otherwise?
But clearly, it was one of MY first conscious decisions (i.e., sacrifice time for training that translated to earning power). And, it turned out well? So I’d call it the best decision I ever made.
Thanks for letting me play in your “challenge”.
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Reinke Faces Life 
[…] Fri 6 Apr 2007 One Of The Smartest Things I Ever Did Posted by G. Lane Cavalier under School (WIU) , Life INTERESTING: One Of The Smartest Things I Ever Did « Reinke Faces Life […]
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Well let me play too, one of the smartest things I ever did was let a friend (namely you) teach me how to program in FORTRAN while we were woking in the military during the early 70s. I ended up leaving the military, and immediately got a job as a ‘programmer’ (it was more because I had a security clearance, but without the FORTRAN on my resume I wouldn’t have gotten the job). From there I have proceeded on a long successful career in IT. Thanks to you ‘passing along knowledge’, as you say in this blog. Well done my friend.
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