erobz said:
I was doing anything but schoolwork, mostly the wrong things. I graduated High school 2nd from the bottom of my class at age 17. I went to work as a farm hand, sandwich shop cook, cashier, cook, lawn care, 3rd shift quality control at concrete plant. It was there that I became interested in math (dealing with the calculations for pre-stressed hollow core slabs-temperature corrections). I started college as and adult student part time.( I had to beg to be let in on the condition I got all A’s first semester). I was working full time overnights at the plant, and attending school part time undeclared. I did that for about a year and a half, until I decided to quit the concrete plant and enroll full time. I picked up a part time job working as a loader at UPS ( I was about 24 at that point). Every morning before going to school I would do 4 hrs (4am to 8 am) loading packages. I managed to do that for 2 year until my grades took a hit. Graduated ( with honors ) in at the ripe age of 28 with a B.S.M.E.T… Now almost 40 -stay at home dad.
I realize this is more than what I was doing at 16, but I felt I would just explain, since my start was ( I imagine) very atypical for the path to this website.
I have similar history in the sense I was so sure I'd a musician when I was young. I did went to 4yr college in Chemistry just because my parent supported me and I did it for them. In 1978, I realize I hated Chemistry, I got married. I actually started out as pizza delivery. I was still into music. BUT it's hard over here in US. Back in late 60s and early 70s, guitar was in, you went far being a good guitar player. But that changed. I can't sing, I am not good in writing songs. Still there's not much of a future.
When I was playing guitar, I had the best amplifier at the time and still it's very limited, one cannot make it sound good until really cranking it up. At the time, only available amps were just overdriving the preamp to get the distortion. But it didn't sound good. I came up with the idea of lowering the voltage of the output stage to make the signal clipped at much lower level and it sounded great. I literally let the preamp section power at full voltage, the filament of all the tubes at full voltage. Then I put a variac to control the voltage of the power tubes to control the clipping. It was beautiful. That's how I first got into electronics.
After working in pizza delivery, that's not the way to live. I started looking for something that I can use the little knowledge of electronics I know. I got a field service tech job for Norelco which made micro cassette recorder used by attorney and other office people to dictate the message and have the secretary type it out. I started learning more. The more I got into it, the more I love electronics. I started staying in the car between service calls and study. It's to the point I screwed up my job and I got fired.
I then spend 3 months studying 18hrs/day and got a better job, a real test technician job in the production. I managed to transfer to the engineering division to test new circuit boards. I started writing assembly test program for testing. Before I knew it, they literally dumped all the programming to me. I literally started as programmer. I got promoted to jr EE in 1980.
I worked very hard, I got a chance to get into LeCroy(one that make digital scope) in 1981, first designing controller using 8085, then I got a chance to move into designing the front end of the ADC unit. Did I study to keep up. I did it. Long story short, I got into RF analog design, Promoted to Sr. EE in 1987 in Seimens and Manager of EE in 1990 in another company.
I really never have formal education in EE, all by self study and using common sense( you won't believe a little common sense go so far even in electronic design). I felt bad to the point I actually started studying all the calculus to PDE AFTER I RETIRED IN 2005. I study Electromagnetics and all AFTER I RETIRED. I just want to be WHOLE. Believe it or not, I was actually RF engineer design circuits before I study all that!!! Just good old common sense.
Speaking about my variable power guitar amp above. I SHOULD HAVE PATENTED IT. NOBODY CAME OUT UNTIL THE 90S from a company in Canada!!! But I was too busy chasing my dreams and just let it go.
Here is a dumpy recording of my playing in street jam in 1978, you can hear the sound of my amp even recorded with a handheld cassette recorder. I quit soon after that. Don't laugh about my playing, this is 46yrs old.