Aged out of work

I’m a 1968 kid. been working since I was really young. It was illegal, but back in the 70’s and 80’s no one cared who delivered their newspaper or if a pair of 9 and 11 year old sisters from next door were babysitting your 4 year old while you went to the grocery store. I also used the gas-powered lawn mower my dad got and charged $5 a yard. He was my most loyal customer.

When I turned 16 in the state of Massachusetts, I got ‘working papers’ which made it legal for me to go get a couple/few real jobs.

There was the gig at the movie theater, an old school mom and pop drug store, and a locally owned restaurant where I mostly wandered around hostessing. in retail I got paid the big bucks – minimum wage was about $4.25, nope, $3.35 and I think the restaurant paid me the same as the servers which was the tipped minimum wage $2.13 and hour.

I didn’t go right to college after high school. Truth be told, I dropped out of whatever grade I was in when I turned 16 because I was restless and bored and disoriented from having moved the year before. I also didn’t see how what I was being told to learn (and do, but I didn’t realize till much later) would help me survive out in the world. I wanted to be self-sufficient. Plus being the new kid in town absolutely sucked so work was a good way to occupy my time.

After a very short stint at Burger King, I went back to high school and graduated in 1986 with the class I was supposed to be with. Right afterward, I got a full time job managing a small, retail photo lab. Anyone remember those same-day-service (then they became one-hour) places back when there was film? It was that kind of place. It was called The Foto Factory. Why did I buck the trend of heading straight to college?

I thought a liberal arts degree was bullshit. Much like high school had seemed like a waste of time, I didn’t see how the general education classes would help me earn money to pay the bills. I was into photography also but didn’t feel like any kind of artist. I did apply to the famed Rhode Island School of Design even though I knew an art degree wasn’t it. Does anyone plan to be a starving artist? I sure didn’t want to test the theory. No, I did not get accepted into RISD.

Even though I had a high interest in technology and had learned BASIC at a summer camp for computer nerds a couple years earlier. I was one of two girls, my cousin was the other. This wasn’t a time when anyone really encouraged my geeky curiosity and steer me toward computer science or engineering. I find that unfortunate as many of my peers who were shown those avenues are retired. Insert crying face emoji.

Because college was still a big deal and getting a degree seemed inherently non negotiable, I thought hey, I’ll combine by photo interests and dive into the technical, craft-based aspects of it and become a commercial photographer of some kind. That satisfied the ‘follow your passion’ and ‘do what you love the money will follow’ and ‘get a degree’ criteria I thought I was supposed to fulfill.

Then I found a school in a place I wanted to live. Or maybe I found home in Santa Barbara and it happened to have a school that fit – almost perfectly – what I thought I wanted to learn.

Fast forward a few years into the 90’s after I’d worked to become a commercial photographer and graphic designer. I was also one those people who had email before the web existed and taught myself HTML once the web became accessible. During this convergence of tech and my desire to figure out how to climb those corporate/org ladders, I went and got an MBA from a place where a guy named Peter Drucker taught (more management than business) and merged my skills and interests into the early. internet and web. As I would learn later, this was a moment where being an early adopter also put me in the position not too many introverts want to be in; (reluctant) evangelist.

Next up…the dot com days.