My own version of this story, or "There and Back Again". I was always a geek. I was in Spelling Bees, read alot, sucked at sports, got picked on a lot (sound familiar?). In the 5th grade, they passed out little index cards with the intention of getting us to join the band. On the card was a list of instruments to choose from. We were supposed to circle one, and hand it back in. I circled Saxophone -- I was a fan of "Happy Days", and Richie Cunningham played the Sax. A couple of weeks later, I was the proud [almost] owner of a cheesy student model alto saxophone, which I picked up pretty quickly.
Over the years in Junior High, and up through High School, my musical affinity grew -- I picked up Guitar in 9th grade (to get girls, of course, which really didn't work all that well), and eventually became part of the marching band at the high school. Now I was a true geek -- a "band fag" to be precise. Along the way, my abilities and aptitude for Math became evident, eventually paving the way for me to go through an Accelerated Math curriculum at my school. Additionally, I took a course in BASIC in the 10th grade, which I found very simple, but never went beyond that (as far as computers) in High school. By the time I was a Senior, and it was time to apply to Colleges, I was torn: Should I try for Music, my passion, or should I be smart, and go into Engineering, or something else to use my Math aptitude (and try to make some money)? I spoke to a number of people, and it was mainly my Band director to whom I give credit (blame?) for my decision to try to meld my love of music and my ability in math into a Music Major with emphasis in Sound Recording Technology -- a Recording Engineer. I attended the University of Lowell, MA (now UMass, Lowell) the following Fall, and excelled in their program when I started. Now, what happens when you dump a total geek into a Music college? Answer: He learns how to party -- and very heartily, I might add. My GPA, which started at 3.6 my first semester, steadily nose-dived for 4 years, til my final semester (my 4th year, but not enough credits to be a Senior) I had something in the ballpark of a 1.6. While at college, I became a real performing musician, playing what we called "covers for drunks" - you know the type - the guy playing and singing in a bar for a bunch of screaming 22-year-olds who want to hear "American Pie" and "Brown-eyed Girl" three times a night. My future wife eventually ended up being my singing partner, and we kept this gig going for a while, eventually no longer "covers for drunks" but playing the coffeehouse circuit with my original compositions. Something else happened along the way also. The University program I was in was a music program, but it was also pretty heavy technically: We had to take up through Calc 2, Basic Electrical Engineering courses, Pascal Programming, and Physics/Acoustics classes, all with the intention of weeding out those musicians who couldn't handle the technical aspects of the program. I had the opposite problem: I aced all the "hard" stuff, and slacked at the music classes. By the middle of my 2nd Senior year, it was obvious that a music degree was not for me, and besides I was broke, and anything more than 4 years of college was on my tab -- not my parents' anymore. I ended up moving back home. I then enrolled in Rhode Island College as (of all things) a Math Major, with the intention of becoming a High School Math teacher! I graduated 3 years later, Magna Cum Laude, and set out to find a teaching job. After substitute teaching for 3 years (at $60/day!) and working odd manual jobs (I was also a professional house painter), I ended up taking some programming classes, and to make a long story short (it's already long, isn't it?), I met someone in the class, and she got me a job working in software Quality Assurance at her company, where I worked for 4 1/2 years, honed my programming skills, and then (where I am now) got a job as a real full-fledged programmer. Which takes us up to just a few months back, when I saw a local Fife & Drum Corps, and I joined them as a Fifer -- having never played the Fife before, but being a geek and a lifelong musician, it was pretty simple to pick up -- which is when I discovered ABC while looking for a way to decently transcribe the ugly-handwritten-photocopies-of-photocopies repertoire I was handed when I joined. So that's my long-winded version of "There and Back Again", in which I go from Geek-to-Musician-to-Geek-to-Musician- . . . How long 'til I'm a geek again? (If you read this far, thanks for humoring me! It's good to spew every now and then. Perhaps I'll add this to my CV!) -Chris -- Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer Ingenta, Inc. 111R Chestnut St. Providence, RI 02903 ph: 401.331.2014 x 102 em: [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: chrismyers001 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
