What Students Need to Know

Students in elementary school need to know how to read, write and do math. They should also note the things they are good at and love to do. These motivated abilities can help you identify what type of work you should prepare to do. This can require trying some extra-curricular activities like sports the arts and music lessons. Those who like puzzles may end up becoming engineers. Those who have the “artist’s eye” can use that skill in construction as well as film.  Musicians learn to work cooperatively in groups. The talents discovered in children can be in adulthood. 

 

In high school, you need to continue to develop the interests and skills you’ve identified for yourself to prepare for the work you want to do. There are more opportunities for extra-curricular activities in high school.

 

College majors and minors should be selected based on your occupational plan. 

 

I became interested in management when I was 10 years old. I was sitting on the porch with my uncles reading the newspaper. The front page story was about a steamfitter union president who was assassinated with a car bomb. I asked my uncles who would do that.  “Mafia” they said. I reacted with “We have Mafia in our unions?” “Yes” they said. I concluded with “We need to get the Mafia out of our unions”.

 

After that, I asked more questions about whose job it was to deal with unions. “The Personnel Directors” was the answer I got. I pressed on and asked what I needed to learn to become a Personnel Director. I found out that they ran the personnel department and reported to the President or owner of the company. It sounded like they made a lot of money.

 

I was admitted to Christian Brothers Military High School in 1957. It was a private Catholic college prep school founded in 1850. It was our “family school”. All of the boys on both sides of our family attended there.  In high school, our freshman homeroom teacher asked if anybody in the class knew what they wanted to do for a living.  I said I wanted to be a Personnel Director in manufacturing. Another classmate said he wanted to be a Dentist. The other 38 students didn’t know what they wanted to do. I had a music scholarship to the family high school, so I played in the band. I was also recruited to join the speech and drama clubs, so I was in plays and musicals. I started a rock band when I was 14 and we played 3 nights a week at teen dances and parties. I worked during summer breaks on a large floating night club housed on a Steam Boat called the Admiral and did 4 hour tours up and down the Mississippi River.

 

I was admitted to St. Louis University in 1961. This was a Jesuit owned Catholic university founded in 1818. In college, I told my faculty advisor that I wanted to be a Personnel Director in manufacturing. Companies preferred liberal arts grads with a “classical education”.  I was told to major in Psychology and I was not impressed, because it was struggling for legitimacy. I preferred Physics, but didn’t want to be an engineer. They required minors in Philosophy and Theology in the School of Arts & Sciences. I chose English as my declared minor and took all the math and real science I could squeeze in and took 20 hours per semester. I joined a “dirty two horn blues band” when I entered college in 1961 and played 6 nights a week in a popular St. Louis nightclub. I worked during summer breaks as a therapist at St. Louis State School and Hospital and Granite City Steel. My senior year, I was allowed to take graduate seminars covering the theories employed by the management consultants who were working with large US manufacturing companies  I graduated in 3 and a half years.

 

My tuition at CBC high school was $500 per year. I had a half scholarship, so I paid $250 per year.  My tuition at St. Louis U was $900 per year. I paid 100% of my tuition costs by working as a musician and taking summer jobs. I also bought my own cars and paid my own running expenses and I lived at home and had no rent or dorm expense. I got married in August 1964 and graduated college in January 1965. Our first daughter was born in June 1966 and we bought a 4 bedroom house on an acre in a subdivision in 1966 for $16,000.

 

I was ready. I took enough science and math to understand manufacturing equipment. I learned human behavior from English literature. I got a good classical education from Philosophy and Theology and learned the current theories in industrial behavior. St. Louis University was very conservative when I attended from September 1961 to January 1965. The faculty actually taught us to select the good stuff from the junk.

 

It took 2 years to get into Personnel.  My first job was with United Way as a Division Campaign Director in 1965 where I broke records and met all the Presidents of all the big companies in St. Louis. I continued to work as a musician on weekends.

 

I got my first Personnel job in 1967 through an agency at an electrical equipment manufacturer. I was surprised when I realized that their President had been one of my United Way Chairmen. This job allowed me to handle all generalist responsibilities normally associated with Personnel work.

 

I spent the rest of my career as a Personnel Director in manufacturing and opened my own private consulting practice in 1993. My career was driven by my curiosity. My first career as a musician from age 14 to age 31 continued until 1975. My corporate career from age 21 to age 50 continued until 1993. My consulting career is home-based and continues to wind down as I am now age 74. We spent our first 10 years in St. Louis Mo, 8 years in Salina Kansas and have lived in Atlanta GA since 1983. My marriage of 53 years produced 6 children, 13 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. We see them often. You can do a lot of damage if you start early.

 

My work as a Personnel Director involved managing policy, corporate culture hiring, compensation, benefits, training, community relations, corporate communication, regulatory compliance and general management aimed at process improvement, cost reduction, site selection, acquisitions and labor relations. My staffs ranged from 6 to 30 and often included payroll, security, general administration and establishing new departments and foreign subsidiaries. I learned accounting, financial analysis and IT on the job. I wrote policies and benefit plan documents for self-managed medical plans. Our church work was extensive. We served as Marriage Encounter and Engaged Encounter Leaders from 1977 to 1995 and Marriage Ministry coordinators until 2005. My wife has worked as a Dental Hygienist since 1986.

 

I tell this story to give students a case study in selecting a vocation and to warn students that they will have to separate the junk themselves. Our universities now specialize in socialist political propaganda and political correctness with little emphasis on actual vocational preparation to function in our free market private sector. Students will need to craft their college preparation carefully and avoid the most liberal colleges.

 

Students who don’t know what kind of work they will want to do should take the occupational interest tests by Kuder or the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory and look at Art Miller’s System for Identifying Motivated Abilities to help them identify their future roles.

 

College today is overpriced and underperforming, so students should seek out lower cost options at community colleges to complete their first 2 years.  Many students are taking courses on-line. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader