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Career history, part 2 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Texas, was a tremendous culture-shock to a kid who grew up in liberal-middle-class southern California. It was really bizarre to be surrounded buy people who proudly called themselves red-necks. In the community I grew up in, "red-necks," so-called for long hours of hard work in the sun (hence sunburn and the red neck) were generally considered to be ignorant, bigoted, rude, alcoholic, noisy, and violent." All of which, frankly, is true, pretty much/in general. In Texas, red-necks are considered wild, fun-loving, individualistic, hard-working party animals" That, too, I would tend to agree with, although I would moderate that part about individualistic. When I think of individualistic, I think of a person who thinks independently and develops her own sense of right and wrong. That's the last thing I'd ever say about the red-necks I knew in Texas. They were a pretty homogenous group. The didn't have a whole lot of respect for values I had which differed from theirs. For them, individualism was more about red-necks as a group dinstinguishing themsellves from aspects of American culture that they didn't agree with. So they valued independence from mainstream society, but not from the values of their own subculture.
The economy in Houston wasn't terribly strong the year I was there, and of the ten months I was registered with the glazer's union, I worked about four. After which time, I decided perhaps I'd join the Air Force, and get I job I couldn't lose.
With my aptitudes in math and science, I had no trouble getting into a good career in maintenance of satellite communications systems. The first four years went well enough, at the end of which I found myself married and happy with the job security. So I reenlisted for another four. At the end of the second stint, I was divorcerd and fresh out of a very ugly misunderstanding with the Air Force that cost me my job, a lot of expense, nuisance, and heartache, and left a really bad taste in my mouth (that is, left me with very bad feelings) about t he Air Force. Also, I had decided that I wanted to work in the home computer industry, doing technical support, and the Air Force had been consistently unable to move me to that field. So I got out of the service and moved to Silicon Valley, California, where I got a job managing a technical support staff for a manufacturer of computer peripherals. I did that for about eight years as well, and saw two companies go bankrupt. By the end of all of that, I was feeling that the computer industry was pretty soulless for me, and that what I really wanted to do was to teach.
See part 3 of 3
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Language pair: English; All
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