Not exactly how I thought this thread was going when I read the Title.
Graduated HS in 72 with only mediocre GPA, due to laziness if I'm honest. Took print shop in HS and first job doing printing in a patent research office only lasted a couple months. Then about 2 years in a hardware/lumber yard store, about 6 months as a brick helper (hardest physical work I ever did). Then to get indoor work I got into electronics assembly for about 4 years.
The machine shop at the plant I worked at was just getting into water based machine cutting fluids from the traditional soluble oil and it caused several machinists to break out in terrible rash so to make up the work force in addition to hiring outside they offered apprenticeships to inhouse employees which I jumped at as it was a lateral pay move. Good job shop environment and I learned quick but after 4 years and my ticket the company got into some patent related trouble and a decline started so I ventured out into the market working at several small job shops till I landed finally in Atlanta working for a start up industrial welding contractor building replacement parts for their orbital TIG welding equipment used in pipeline work.
Was there for 21 years, met my future wife who was their QA manager, got into engineering and learning CAD and designing remote operated welding and machining tools for hazardous environments, Nuke plants, Oil Refineries, Power Boilers and paper mills.
The original owners went public then sold the business to an investment group, and as a show of gratitude gave 7 employees shares of stock in the new company to show the new owners who had got them from starting in their garage to $130,000,000 in yearly sales. My late wife was one of those, within 2 years all but 1 had been "released".
2 rival spin offs started from that talent shedding, my wife and 2 others started one of them and I went with her as the company engineering head still building tooling. Took 5 years for us to get into the black, just as she passed to cancer. A year later we were absorbed into a larger power industry company who thought they wanted a service arm to support their boiler projects with big promises of taking us to the next level, providing the support of their sales force which never happened as they didn't really want to or know how to sell service and support, just new product. So after 7 years they shut us down.
But that's getting off subject. During that 35 year span I met a lot of really intelligent folks, Nuclear and Steam Power engineers who would retire then get sucked back into contract work because there was no one coming up with the knowledge they had.
The old companies, Babcock and Wilcox, GE, Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering, Riley Stoker etc. down the line have all become shadows of their former greatness and largely been sold off or absorbed into foreign concerns and kept alive in name only.
but the Army paid all but one semester and he got a $1,200 monthly stipend. He left college with two degrees and zero debt. He had no job worries after graduation because he had a four-year commitment. He's now a Captain in Military Intelligence in South Korea for the next two months. It's not an easy road, but it's an option.
