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And with the end of May Nineteen Ninety-Four came the end of my last
full semester of College. Having a chat with the receptionist
student of half American and half German background, she told me that
it had been a very close decision when tallying the grades but she
had just narrowly beat me to become our Campus's Valedictorian. As
the role conferred the responsibility of giving the speech at the
graduation ceremony, I was glad I had just missed the bar as I didn't
want to attend the event anyhow. I
had actually received a better honor already by the time I graduated.
The College had offered an Academic Excellence Award the previous
year and I had won it giving me some additional scholarship money.
With the end of College came the end of my Social Security PASS Plan
and I would once again be back to my normal monthly income. Now with
the most recent turn of the year cost of living adjustment, I would
have just over one hundred dollars of spare money each month. I
remembered how I had started at my first apartment having just under
fifty dollars per month five years earlier.
There was still one more College class for me to take. It was a job
hunt preparation class of only a couple sessions offered at the end
of each semester for graduating students. As the Spring version
conflicted with a core class I needed for my degree, my chance to
take it had been bumped to the end of the summer semester. Still I
wasn't going to wait for it before updating my resume
and mailing it out. Actually, as I had gained such a diversity of
skills over the years, I created three 'targeted' resumes, each with
a subset of my skills intended for different types of computer jobs.
One variation listed all of my Desktop Publishing skills, one for my
Personal Computer maintenance and configuration skills, and finally
the Computer Programming variation listing all of my completed
projects, languages, and development platform experience. But
this last one gave me pause. As I had roughly fourteen years of
software development under my belt, but listed my degree as being
received this year, I wondered if this resume would be seen as
'too good to be true'. As I had already had years of people
disregarding my computer skills as they couldn't believe that I
could truly have them I decided to play it safe and take out my most
impressive projects, just keeping to a handful that would show
breadth of skill without too much depth of experience. Technically,
everything still in that resume was true, it just left out quite a
bit.
With these resumes completed, I began mailing them to various
businesses I thought might be interested and have openings,
especially Rocky Mountain Telecom. That was still the place I wanted
to work at and given my past letter of recommendation and the names
of a few managers there, I felt I'd be a shoo-in now that I had my
degree 'in hand'.
One wrinkle, I didn't have my degree in hand yet.
As I hadn't taken that final course, they hadn't printed it up for
the end of the spring semester. I'd have to wait until after the end
of the summer semester before they'd issue the 'sheep skin' document
to me. I didn't think it would be an issue.
Our local office of Colorado Vocational Rehabilitation was thrilled
with my completion of college and let the University of Colorado job
hunting team know so they could now bring forth jobs requiring a
degree in order to apply. As a twist, they had found a job for me
that didn't need the degree. Their helper I most often worked with
had a perfect job for me: His wife was part of a start-up business
that would be producing a new medical device. The Federal Drug
Administration approval of their device would come down 'any day now'
and they'd be making money hand over fist. As they wanted to get
ready for that, they had rented office space and wanted to hire me to
setup and maintain all of their data processing systems and office
computers. I was taken to the empty office space they were going to
move into and met his wife and all seemed fine, but it just wasn't
that Rocky Mountain Telecom type job I had my eye on. Further,
there were often reports in the news of how the F.D.A. routinely
dragged their feet on approving anything and I felt like this new
business was counting their one chicken before it had hatched. I
explained this to the job hunting associate as my reasons why I
wouldn't take the job, noting too that Social Security only had a
limited transition period when taking a job and I didn't want to lose
it on a business that might be defunct in under a year if the F.D.A.
approval didn't come as hoped for.
To put it mildly, he was outraged I was turning down this job
opportunity. He had been working on my behalf for the past two years
to find me a job and here I was, with the first solid job opening he
had found for me, nix that, a job
specifically designed
by him through
his wife's position at the start-up to use my talents, and
I was turning it down so I could wait around for a ''Pie in the sky''
corporate job that I would most likely never get. Not only was
he outraged but he was dropping me as a client. My VocRehab
counselor, Greg, was shaken by this as well but at the same time he
understood my position and decided he wouldn't let this fall out
result in VocRehab dropping me, too. Still, he warned me that I
really couldn't pick and chose a prospective job, I needed to be
thankful for what I could get going forward.
Two months later, Daina and I drove past the set of offices the
start-up company had been settling into only to now see the offices
were once again vacant and for lease. Either the F.D.A. approval had
failed to come through like I suspected and the company had already
folded, or they had hit it big and decided to immediately move to a
more prestigious office park elsewhere in town. As I never heard the
name of the company again, I suspect it was the former that happened
and I had made the right decision.
In the meantime, since my resume was already sent in to various
companies around town, all I needed to do was sit at my apartment and
wait to hear back from one or more of them with job offers. The
months came, and the months went, without a call.
When August came and I took the preparing
to job hunt
class, sure enough, there was nothing in the class that I didn't
already know...
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