OmniGLH
Autocross Newbie
Funny - I wanted to be a mechanic as my first choice. My dad was a mechanic for years. He refused to let me do it, specifically because he knew it was hard on the body. Most of his mechanic friends were pretty beat up by middle age with tons of ailments. Knee problems, back problems, etc. from crawling around cars.
Now.... I'm fairly certain I'd have only been a tech for a period before likely moving into my own shop or something but... no way to know that for sure.
Yeah Microsoft was weird on that. They paid well, and if you were located back at one of the Washington campuses, it was a great place to work with tons of extra benefits and perks. If you weren't in WA, it was a lot tougher.
I did some growing up with CC. I was an honors and AP student all through HS, put all my eggs in one basket when it came to college choice (wanted U of I Engineering... well, and Northwestern, but tuition costs made that impossible) and found myself waitlisted. Too many middle class white kids. U of I offered to keep me on the waitlist or give me admission to UIC instead. I took UIC as I didn't want to wind up without school and have to (lord help me) go to CC where all the "dumb kids" went.
I did one semester at UIC, slacked off BIG time, actually failed my first class ever. Hated going there... and found myself at CC the next semester. There were some idiot students but since I was in most of the harder classes anyways, it overall was a good experience. The teachers were also WAY better. I took a lot of night classes so I could work during the day and found that most of the professors taught classes (no TA's) and a lot of the night class prof's were teaching as a side gig because they enjoyed teaching.
I've since been a fan. Both the cost savings, and the fact that 100 and 200 level courses are taught by prof's vs. ESL TA's is a huge selling point to me.
