What was your degree and is it relevant to your job?

Norman_Conquest said:
Everyone is involved in computers, what happened to shipbuilders, steel making and other iron fighting trades that the North East was built on? ;)

I left school in the summer of 1978 and started my apprenticeship in the September at Smith's Dock. Although I took my exams at school, I never went back to collect my exam results, I just wasn't interested. We completed four years at Longlands College and I passed all my City and Guilds with credits. I stayed at the Dock until it closed and then travelled with work to all major sites in the UK and a few abroad.

During my contracting days, I missed so much of my eldest son growing up that I decided to take a low paid job at Caterpillar so I could be at home when my youngest was born. During this time I had an accident at work and had to have two operations on my lower spine. I had been off work for two years recuperating and was advised not to return to welding and had to seek employment in another field.

You can imagine this shook me to the bone and I didn't know where to start looking or thinking what I could do. Previously, I had never been out of work longer than a few months when the Dock first closed and was taking badly to not working and being stuck inside all day. Looking back, I would say depression had started to set in.

In the Gazette, I saw an advert for a Youth Work course and went and enrolled in this. It was more to get me out and meet people again. I completed the course and was working a few hours for R & C council and decided I wanted something to back up the Youth Work. Redcar and Cleveland College had just delivered a flyer and was advertising an Introduction to Counselling Course. I again enrolled in this and excelled at it, with the course tutor pushing me to go on and on each year and finally pushing me to go to university where I completed my degree in Counselling.

Whilst at R & C College, I needed 40 hours counselling others to complete my course and volunteered for the Connexions Mentoring Service. I soon gained a good reputation with these and when they started the Kick Start Programme, I was offered a job with them and was still allowed to attend Uni and finally completing my degree in counselling. I progressed through Connexions Service, becoming an advisor working with young offenders and returned back to Uni completing a second degree.

I soon found out I didn't like the counselling side of the work and was more suited to working with young people and their families. I was going into schools in the East Clevland area to support the students I worked with and improved the attendance of the majority of students on my caseload.

It was during this time I was approached by a Head Teacher and asked if I would come in and speak to him about them setting up a Behavioural Unit in the school. One thing led to another and I spent 13 years heading up the unit until I took early retirement.



Edit: I meant to add, that if you told me in 1978 I would work in a school, I would have told you to go and get your bumps felt and I feel most of my teachers would have said the same.
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Yes but what about the carpentry?

You've done some great stuff there NC. (y)
 
Laughing said:
It's a cobol directive to run the dataset seals through the function hoops. COBOL programmers would often name their datasets and functions so that a through b had some meaning above the compiler directive.

I never said it was a good joke.

My favourite geek joke is:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, thoughs that understand binary and those that don't
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What sits on Long John Silver's shoulder saying "Pieces of seven, pieces of seven"?

A parity error.
 
Multimedia Journalism, I now work in digital design after working in marketing for a bit.

Some of the skills I picked up during the course are still relevant, I also do a bit of copywriting as part of my job and worked on Adobe software that I still use now.
 
Electronic and Electrical engineering. Relevant to what I do but as many have said you learn more after uni.
I always remember in my first job one of the electricians asked me to come and look at a piece of equipment as it was broken. I looked at it and said I've just realised that I spent 3 years at uni learning how things work, but they never taught us how they break down.
 
Laughing said:
A car mechanic was all I ever wanted to be. Not much of it around when I left school in 1981.
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Loved every minute of it I worked on every type of of manufacturer and models you can name.
I left in 78, I got a job in the Haverton Shipyard but after passing the tests, there was an announcement that it was closing in the new year.

I went to Bircham Newton CITB and passed the test there sponsored by George Fordy, but it was a 7 year apprenticeship and had echoes of the army life.
Tough times on Teesside at the time.
 
Another Computer Science degree here - graduated 1981

Not used anything I learned on my course directly - I found my finals exam papers a couple of years ago and couldn't understand them never mind answer them.
 
Malaguena said:
Another Computer Science degree here - graduated 1981

Not used anything I learned on my course directly - I found my finals exam papers a couple of years ago and couldn't understand them never mind answer them.
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Not many studied it in the 70s I guess.
 
afcb_acklam said:
I didn't get it either, and I was a COBOL programmer once, albeit not a very good one - hated it, too much like hard work. Am much better at browsing internet forums.
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Me too, my first job. Programmed in COBOL for 12 months and hated every second. Chucked the job and bought a one way bus ticket to Paris - long, long time ago.
 
spanishman said:
I didn't get it. I was a Pascal man myself.

The last line of code I wrote in a professional capacity was in 1987.

I then went on to running projects and programmes on networks that delivered financial information and news in real time around the world.

Plus I did a couple of years managing a 30+ team of software developers. I really did not enjoy that job. Apart from the network design intro training courses I chose to run for new joiners. They were fun.
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Pascal was great. c++ and a **** lecturer killed my hopes over ever suceddeding in programming.
 
Erm, yet another Computer Science graduate (86 to 89) here. Never used it although it did allow me to get on a Mathematics PGCE so I guess it set me on the path to where I am now.
 
Software Engineering and worked in software development until recently retiring, I had or have no interest in technology, but it was a easy job rather than doing a real job and very well paid which I found quite embarrassing for the amount of work we actually did, preferred labouring in the construction industry but zero job security , having to travel to find work and harder on the body as you get older
 
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