I’ve come to one of those difficult inflection points in life. This should be a particularly triumphant moment where I’ve finished my engineering internship and am returning to college for my senior year, with the decision to leave my former employer fully and overwhelmingly justified. Consider this for a moment – the factory, at first, wasn’t going to humor my interest in moving from production to engineering at all. I was getting no response, the human resources woman clearly thought I was crazy and wasn’t even going to talk to me about it. She only responded when I put in my two weeks notice in and said I’m going to college to be an engineer, buh-bye. I was the only one in the company, besides two other people who needed to be on other jobs, who could operate a certain machine, so my leaving was a problem that got the plant manager’s attention. He tried to talk me into staying, but on their standard “take a class a semester and work your regular 12 hr day schedule” program. After 8 years of having every minute of every day spoken for, at 58 years old, I’d finally be able to get off the factory floor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Compare that to the way things should<\/em> have went down – get off the factory floor after two weeks, in less than a year (because I already had two years of college done) be working as an engineer (albeit, an intern); be a full-time engineer in two years. Not a bad move, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, I think the elephant in the room here is my age, and my work history as a freelance artist. If you’ve read this far, you probably think I have some value as an artist, and, at times, it’s been good to me. But, on a resume I guess I look like an “old failure” to the average HR person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had real good interactions with a couple companies at career day. I caught some good breaks there, the kind you would dream would happen. One of my classes toured two factories. At the end of the tours, there was an opportunity to hand off a resume. One factory was pitching a quality control job they were just opening up. I was the only one with resumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a single factory contacted me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one particularly difficult class, the Professor did after-exam reviews online. I was the only one who showed up. Ever. Apparently I was the best student in the class, at least at the time of the 2nd exam review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since I’ve been back to college, I’ve gotten an A in every class and have an overall A average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a single factory contacted me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought about working production over the summer, but I needed to hold onto the online job because its the only thing I can fit around a college schedule. That should have been o.k., but as that job went from start-up to sort-of established, it became harder and harder to make money with it. So I tried to add another one. When I passed their test, they had another test. But they messed that up and I’d have to take it again. I might, but they may be going away in a few days so that doesn’t feel like a good use of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which means I’ve got to find another job, because the financial hits just keep on coming. I was fortunate to be able to fix my car and truck myself. That could have easily went over a thousand if I had to take them to a professional mechanic. But, my water heater needs to be replaced and I’m not going to get a break on that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So now I’m at a point where, despite having a very successful junior year in college, I’m probably going to have to drop out again; and the end result is that I went backwards instead of forwards, and badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, I’ve got to go mow the lawn. That’s enough for one post, I’ll follow up later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve come to one of those difficult inflection points in life. This should be a particularly triumphant moment where I’ve finished my engineering internship and am returning to college for my senior year, with the decision to leave my former
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