High-tech and Writing Don't Require Advanced Degrees

About 400 years ago, when I graduated college and computers still took up whole wings of buildings, I ran across a small computer room that my brother ran for his university and I've been hooked ever since. It's not that I have a degree in technology. I have a degree in history, but if you think about it my careers they do overlap.

Imagine doing a history research project without using a computer. It really can't be done. In fact, it was tough to do when I was in college back in the days of Flower Power.

Being hooked on a something and actually doing it are two different things, so how did I accomplish it? First I got was involved in writing - a natural outgrowth of history study where you are constantly doing research and writing about that research. I went to a cooperative education school so I had a chance to move from a strict history curriculum into a journalism path and I was actually hired by my co-op employer - a newspaper -- and I became an editor/writer/columnist for the next dozen years. I gained my training strictly through experience - trial and error - and management's belief in my ability. Indeed, I was managing a newsroom at 21 years old with 18 people reporting to me.

I also learned about cars as I became the autowriter/columnist and was responsible for six to seven special supplements a year, a weekly column, as well as my daily pages. This was a real pressure cooker.

As I worked, putting together pages for the paper, I found that my old love of technology resurfaced as I hung around the computer geeks who kept our early mainframe system going. I then became the system trainer because I was the person who was using many of the features of the system that my colleagues weren't even trying (deliberately changing column lengths, creating specialized boxes and such).

Well, it was a downhill slide from there. After a stint as a freelance writer, supporting my family as a writer and hardware and software evaluations - I taught myself about operating systems and programming languages and was a pretty good BASIC/dBase programmer. I then used this experience and to gain employment at a major computer company as a Senior Hardware/Software Technical Writer. I had to take internal System Management courses and become a subject matter expert so that I could write intelligently about my technical topics. I published 8 or 10 successful technical manuals and journals.

I parlayed this into the modernization of a major organization that is still using the basic outline I laid down 18 years ago and during the same time I was also able to take a few courses that were offered and paid for by my contract. From here, I went to work as a hired gun contract system manager for much of the 90s, coming in to a facility and find their problems, fixing them and re-documenting procedures. I was using all my talents for this. Thus, I used my history degree to completely change my career. Indeed, I showed you don't need a computer degree to become a computer expert.