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
Good one, and how I wish I'd done those first two years at a local community college rather than running into debt and burnout at an overpriced denominational college. After two years at M.E.C.C. with very likely a little extra money in my pocket, I might have finished a B.S. in Health Psychology at university, instead of coming home ill and going through life with only trade school diplomas...
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