As I was sitting in a rural high school gym yesterday I found myself reminiscing about my own youth. It wasn’t for a typical reason you might think of for a middle aged man watching high school students play volleyball.
Despite liking sports and even once walked into a tryout to play for my high school, I quickly turned around, left and never played organized sports. So it wasn’t me reliving my glory years. Instead as I looked around the gym I thought I recognized someone, but wasn’t confident it was them. After checking with my friend, whose son I was there to watch, he confirmed it was who I thought.
It must have been 1999 or 2000 when I last saw them. We had worked together in a wood shop where we made country style furniture and decor. He worked in the manufacturing part of the operation and I worked in the finishing shop. We all worked closely together though and took our lunch and breaks together as well.
For some there this would be their career, or something similar. This person though had other plans. He was taking an Electronics course at our local community college and had goals to work at a local plant as a technician helping repair electronics and machines. The plant had a reputation for being a great employer and who paid one of the higher salaries in our area. For someone in my spot in life, having essentially dropped out of high school two years in a row, it seemed like one of the best possible outcomes for myself. So I listened to him and decided I’d follow his footsteps. Having often taken electronic things apart to try and see how they worked, or to try and fix them, it seemed like a fitting choice.
With somewhat of a plan now I dedicated myself and finished high school and enrolled in the same course. He was in the second year of the program while I was in the first though we didn’t interact a whole lot. The second years mostly stuck together and we did the same as first years.
The course was interesting and I learned a lot, though I never used it directly in my career.
Being laid off from the wood shop I had started working at a retail store part time. One of my co-workers there was also in the first year of the program I was in and we became friends. It was thanks to him that I found about a new company starting up and looking to hire a lot of people. It was a call centre doing internet technical support. It paid a lot better than the minimum wage we were making at the time and had flexible shifts so we could work lots around school.
At this point in time I was not technical or computer literate at all. My friend helped me study and he helped me email in my resume. We attended the career fair they had set up, and thanks to his help, and me eavesdropping on others who were at the career fair, I somehow managed to pass their technical test and so was on their list. I didn’t get hired in their first round, but I did in the second.
It was this job that really changed the trajectory of my life. It started me learning computers well. It was here where I had someone in leadership take notice of me and start giving me more opportunities. This lead to leadership positions of my own and I started to see the possibility of even more for my career. This is also where I started teaching myself to program and what pushed me to further my education in Computer Science. All these aspects though paled by the fact that is job is also where I met my wife.
All these thoughts and connections were quickly going through my mind while sitting in the gym. I’m certain he didn’t even recognize me, and I never said anything to him as I left. What would I say?
You probably don’t remember me, but thank you or being a pivotal person in my life at just the right time. In part because you unknowingly steered me down this path, my life has ended up in a place that the high school drop out you knew back then couldn’t even see as a possibility. Thank you.
Sandy McFadden 