Career Advising at EOU

I've known I wanted to be a teacher since about the third grade when I helped other students with their math, and saw that "light bulb turn on" in their heads when they understood a new concept.  Later in high school when I was choosing a major, I also knew that I didn't want to teach grade school, junior high, or high school, so I pretty much put teaching out of my head.  I worked opening shift at Bob's Big Boy family restaurant, and I noticed a few things.  First, I liked working indoors.  I didn't want to be climbing telephone poles in the middle of winter, or anything like that.  Second, I didn't want to spend my life in the restaurant business.  I actually had a good time with it, but I saw what I called the "Bob's trap" - they pay you just enough to live on.  As soon as you decide to have children or buy a house, you can't afford
to quit even if you wanted to.  If you started over at another restaurant, for example, you'd start out at a lower salary and you couldn't afford  it - you were "trapped" at Bob's.

I always enjoyed math, even though my calculus grades my senior year in high school were modest.  I just wasn't too serious about school.  There's more to life than studying, right!?!  My gpa after my sophomore year was 3.8, and every quarter it would go down, down, down.  I graduated with a 3.52 gpa, got the honor cords - YESSSS!  One more quarter, and I'd a been toast!  So, I knew I liked math and my dad was a technician, so I decided to major in electrical engineering (EE).  EE also has a certain elitism, which I suppose I liked.  Others dropped out of EE, real men could handle it, right!?!

Well, as a macho thing I took 18 credits of the hardest classes I could sign up for, and performed at a very mediocre level.  After 2 years at OSU I applied to the "engineering school," but they required a 3.3 gpa, well above my paltry 2.9.  I was invited to become a nuclear engineer, OUCH! (Actually, a 2.9 and finding the girl of my dreams isn't too bad, and I get to tell everyone I "flunked out" of OSU).  So, I decided to transfer to PSU.  I had a whole year to take just 2 courses before I could apply to the engineering school at PSU, so I took a lot of math and gen. ed.  Near the end of my fourth year, I was completing my junior level EE courses and the requirements for a math degree, when I discovered something terrible - I didn't particularly like EE!  Tracing voltages and currents through circuits ad nauseum didn't sound like my thing.  However, the EE department was offering a special course that spring term.  I tried it out, and I loved it!  I have been doing it ever since.  The course was a laser course.

I was graduated a year later, didn't want to look for a job so I went to grad school.  After getting a Master's in EE, I went to work for a defense contractor in Texas (Oregon is better than Texas, at least for a native Oregonian).  Me and 10,000 others got laid off after I had worked there for a year and a half, so I went back to grad school at PSU, finished a Ph.D. in EE studying lasers, got a job teaching in Kentucky (Oregon is better than Kentucky, at least for a native Oregonian).

So, the circle is complete.  I wanted to be a teacher and liked math when I was very young.  I decided I liked working with people when I worked at the restaurant in high school.  I became a professor, and now I'm back in Oregon (home).  I gladly accept a modest income for summers off to spend more time with my family.