Prequel

Before we move into my post-college work journey, I'll catch you up with my pre-college work journey. My first job - well it wasn't really a job - was as an entrepreneur. Of course, I did the lemonade stand, but I also sold stuff. I looked around my room for anything that someone might find valuable, slapped a price on it, and tried to sell the stuff on my front lawn. I also made things. I had found a cache of small, electrical motors in my neighbor's basement. (He let me have them.) I mounted a propeller on the motor, taped it to the top of an old Colgate toothpaste tube box, stuck two D batteries in the box, wired up the motor, and sold it for 25 cents as a portable electric fan. I sold two of them to my neighbor across the street, although no one ever bought my old comic books and baseball cards. I wasn't much of a business man.

After that - I was probably 9 or 10 years old - I cut lawns. I had two clients. I got $5 a lawn. That wasn't bad money for a 10 year old in the early 70's. After that, I was a paperboy. I made about $13/week delivering 55 papers a day with my bike - 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I had a metal basket strapped to my handle bars that held the papers. The papers were so heavy they destroyed the bearings in my front tire; after that, I had to push the papers around in an old shopping cart. The next job was clamming: My friend Tom and I bought a boat and pulled clams out of the Great South Bay for $20/day. It was hard work, but when we didn't feel like working we just took the boat across the Bay and went to the beach! At the end of my senior year in high school, I moved into the restaurant business. I became a busboy at Sizzler Steakhouse making $4.25/hour and all the soda I could drink. After a couple of months, I was promoted to dishwasher. I really liked that job. I may return to that line of work someday! I worked at Sizzler until I left for college in August of 1981.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I got to college, but since I was a very good student, it seemed like the a logical choice.

Things did not get any clearer when I arrived on campus.