Monday, March 23, 2009

What I wanted to be when I grew up or what I went to school for and now I do Notes

A while ago some colleagues and myself were discussing our backgrounds and some interesting points came up. The Lotus Notes space seems to have a lot of degrees other than Computer Science related. I for one am am perfect example. I went to school for Culinary arts. Yes I wanted to be a chef when I grew up!

I know of a master cabinet maker who is a fantastic Admin. I know another person who studied to be an archeologist. So who has the most offbeat education? Spread the word this could be a fun discussion

Chef John

9 comments:

  1. Studied business technology, didn't finish. Did real estate for about 7 years, found myself selling my computer skills to other agents, more than I sold real estate. Transitioned to tech support, and ended up the Lotus Notes Developer for the tech support company. After 10+ years I'm pretty darn at it.

    Tim Paque, Software Engineer

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  2. I majored in Latin American Studies at Swarthmore College, which was a mix of history and poli sci and such. My most notable involvement with computers at Swarthmore was having the dubious honor of being the first person every convicted of a computer related offense by the Student Judiciary Committee. That was enough to get me hired by the computer center where I worked for the next few years. I graduated with a BA, but software development just seemed more entertaining than graduate school, so I got a job doing that and never looked back.

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  3. @Ben care to share the offense? :-)

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  4. Double major in philosophy and finance who dropped out after 18 months to take a job at the company later known as Relavis.

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  5. I have a degree in Mathematics And The Social Sciences. That's one degree, with one major, not two. I did an honors project using directed graph theory to study whether power relationship theories from the field of social psychology could be applied to analysis of international politics.

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  6. This is not a new phenomenon. When I was working in the programming dept. of a major Dutch corporation 30 years ago (yes, that's three zero) I had among my colleagues:
    - a student of Arabic (decided after two years to go for a different career)
    - a former astronomer (quit his university job)
    - a former biochemist (same)

    Mind you, it was that time in history in which no formal IT education existed. For many it was a world to step into with a bit of a pioneer's spirit.

    By the way, myself, I quit my studies in electronics and decided to go and work for the company as a programmer, enrolling in their internal training program (as I said, there were no formal IT studies back then).

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  7. My undergrad is in Accounting, my MBA in International Taxation, spent 2 years working on Broadway and trying to get into the Music biz.
    Unlike Ben, I wasn't caught by the school, but did end up virus cleaning(wonder how they always had viruses the day I needed a computer) the library ones so I always had computer time :-)

    Gave it all up when I was brought into Bankers Trust and this "New" product from Lotus called Notes was coming soon, well we had R2 but needed R3.

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  8. I don't have a degree, I went to the school of hard knocks.

    Ended up at IBM doing 1 day a week at college and 4 days at IBM, working on things liks PROFS, OfficeVision and OS/2

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  9. @Carl Tyler I think I sat behind you at that school.

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