Losing Well Part 2

Continuation of my series, Losing Well. Part 1 can be found here.

    High school was a horrible time for me. My Mom remarried and we moved to a new state. I lost all my old friends and I didn’t get along with my my Step-Dad. My family didn’t have money and I went to a school were that was important. I eventually graduated in the bottom 25% of my class. I hated the industrial school system. I couldn’t thrive in that style of learning environment. After graduating, I had nothing else to do, so I enrolled in my local community college.
    What I loved about college was that the classes were usually smaller and when they weren’t, I could make appointments with the instructors. As an incoming Freshman, the school gave me a reading test. I scored above college graduate. And before my Freshman year was over I’d made the President’s List; straight A’s. My Mother was thrilled that I’d proved my old grade school wrong.           After proving myself, I was accepted by the local state university. After graduating with a two year degree, I moved into the dorms on campus as a Junior. I loved living away from my family and everything seemed to fall into place. I joined the debate team, I was elected to serve on student government and worked five on campus jobs. I had lots of friends and in my off time even went to class.
    My grades suffered compared to community college but I learned how to cram effectively. This allowed me maximum flexibility while keeping adequate grades. When I aced final exams, my professors often told me they were surprised at how well I’d done because they had low expectations for me. I’d explain to them that my classes were playing second fiddle to my life.     
    While at school, I met a girl and fell in love. It wasn’t a healthy relationship. I’d witnessed no healthy relationships to emulate. I didn’t have much knowledge of how relationships should play out. Even so, I should have figured out that it wasn’t going to work and moved on. I didn’t and she became a huge part of my story.
    I graduated in the May and got married in June. I didn’t have a job. I was twenty-two years old. Some part of me knew that my marriage wasn’t going to work. But getting married seemed like a better idea than moving back in with my Step-Dad.  
    My first job out of college was work at a grocery store. The work was hard and unfulfilling. I was just trying to make some cash while I was looking for a career. I moved on from the grocery store to selling TV’s at a local retail store. Then I finally got a “real” job working at a finance company. The wages were horrible and the job was mostly collections. I hated it.
    After six months, the finance company let me go. While I hated the job it was a blow to the ego to fail. The old grocery store chain I’d worked for rehired me. I was set to start work there the following week. That’s when I saw a want ad in the paper for a software tester. No one in the tech industry wanted to do software testing. But to me that sounded great. I went down the to the temp agency and they had me take some computer literacy tests. I passed and they setup an interview. I did well and was offered a temp to perm job making eight dollars and hour.
    It was my first real break. I was working for a company that made fuel pumps. I was testing to make sure that customers could pay at the pump. I loved it. I was always thinking of new and creative ways to break the software. It turned out I was a good systems analyst. I used these skills to convince the company to convert me from temp to perm. Which they did for nine dollars an hour.  
    For the next year and half I was a lab rat. I spent my days testing pumps and making credit cards. I setup computers to monitor other computers. I crawled around hooking up machines with wires all over the floor. It was really a paid internship. I was being taught how to become a software tester. This experience was more valuable than my college degree.
    In the late 1990’s, IT was going through a bubble. Everyone with degrees or experience was running off to Silicon Valley to find their fortune. This left people like me to scoop up their now empty jobs. After working in IT for a year and half, a friend suggested I look for a new job. So I put my first resume on the internet. The level of interest surprised me. I had a phone interview and landed my first consulting job. It paid fifty thousand dollars a year. I was in disbelief.

Part 3 can be found here.