A High School Skill that Unexpectedly Redirected My Life
Typing was the catalyst for my career in R&D computing
Sometimes insignificant decisions can affect your life in unexpected ways. Like a boat traveling over a long distance, just a minor adjustment to the tiller will have large effects over time.
In Highschool, I was shy and lacked self-confidence, especially with members of the fairer sex. I didn’t have the size or coordination to play team sports. I ran cross-country and wasn’t very good at that. I developed a strategy to increase my odds. I would take typing. To help tell the whole story, I was also taking all the shop classes I could… woodworking, welding, and drafting. Being dyslexic, I felt my future was in the blue-collar sector. The typing strategy did get me quality time with girls but I was too shy to execute the opportunity. What I got out of typing was much more valuable! I learned to type.
You can never judge the impact a decision will have on the future.
While typing was seen as a clerical skill in the late 70s when I was in high school, it opened up a door for me that wouldn’t have been as easy to open had I not been able to touch-type. Because of my shop skills, I was hired into R&D as a technician, running pilot plants for a major chemical company. As an R&D tech, we were expected to build, modify and maintain the units we ran. When we started migrating control of these units from setpoint loop controllers to computers, I was there. I took to the computer code, DowTRAN* in this case. Writing software for process control was a new skill set that few college courses addressed, so when the need for a new part-time job maintaining the code for the unit I was assigned to, I was tapped to fill it… and I could type! I had never been a fast typist but I was accurate and when typing syntax accuracy is more important than speed.
That class and some others I took at night at the local university opened the door to the R&D Computer group where I spent the next almost 30 years of my career. When I retired I had a group of engineers and instrument technicians supporting the automation needs for Dow Chemical R&D on the Gulf Coast.
I look back at that typing class as the catalyst for my career in R&D computing.
Reference
DowTRAN: A computer code developed by Dow Chemical designed to run on the inhouse developed process control system MOD. The code was a FORTRAN like structured text specific for chemical process control.
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