6/26/26 marks 31 years to the day that I walked into the Faribault Junior High School for my first half-time summer job at the School District.
The District had just purchased a new electronic card catalog system. My job in the Summer of 1995, along with a small team of 3 others, was to go through drawer-by-drawer of every wooden card catalog in every school, and type in the call number, author, title, and description of every book into the computer.
It paid $7 an hour.
But, it ended up being worth way more than that.
The following summer, I was finishing up my second year of schooling at South Central Technical College. I applied and was selected for a paid internship in the Data Services Department for the School District, working for a small department of 3 people (including supervisor). My main responsibility was writing code for something called a “web server”, something that allowed people to view content on the “Internet”. New stuff back then!
A year later, I’d get hired on full-time in a reorganized department known then as the Media and Technology Department. I was hired technician #2. That first Summer, we set up a coaxial network in a temporary building in the parking lot of the Faribault High School so the main office could function while the school doubled in size through construction.
Oh, and I had to try to learn everything necessary to wire that new “Internet” thing to every one of our schools, setup electronic mail for every user, setup new file servers, and install network cards in whatever computers we had at the time.
I survived!
My job has changed a lot since then, but in many ways it’s also the same. You have to keep moving and learning in order to stay relevant. And you have to do so with a smile on your face and always having the willingness to help someone out. You also have to know when to have compassion for someone when they are especially stressed and bump what might be an ordinary, small task up to the top of the pile to help alleviate some of that stress or worry. Sometimes it means more than they can express in words.
I would like to believe that is one reason why I’m still around, and relevant.
Here’s to another year of moving, learning, and staying relevant!