imroy's Journal: Wow, five years down

Well, this is now about 5 years since I left home and started work at my first job. Yesterday I was filling out the form to enroll (or just request?) in a course at Charles Sturt University. Part of the form asked for my employment history so I ratted around and found evidence. I found my first pay slips and the letter confirming my employment. I also found some entries I had made in two little organiser thingies.

So, pull a chair up and listen to the story of how a naive geek was plucked from his hideout and thrust into the RealLife(tm).

Background info: My senior year of highschool (year/grade 12) was 1994. My TER (Tertiary Entry Rank) wasn't spectacular but it was still enough to get into a Bachelor of IT (I think that's the title) course at the local university (the aforementioned CSU). First year was ok, except for a certain lecturer "Al". Thankfully I/we managed to figure out what he wanted (basically just copy from the textbook!) to get a passing grade and move on from him. Second year was probably better, I had more interesting and stimulating classes. Hey, I'm a geek and I happen to like computer architecture (go MIPS!). Third year was not so good however. The classes were getting less interesting, which has always been a hurdle for my motivation. I started failing subjects, even repeatedly. So I applied to take a year off as a break.

With my "break" I started applying for jobs. Still living at home, I wasn't exactly under a lot of pressure to look terribly hard or often. But after almost 6 months I lucked out. I had applied for a job which (from memory) wanted experience with low-level programming on PC unix (specifically SCO). Ugh, SCO. I thought that my Linux experience might count for something. What happened was that some internal changes were made and the position changed, but they didn't want to send out a new ad. My resume looked interesting so they asked me in for an interview.

So Mum drove me (sheesh, I still don't have a license) down to Sydney on a Wednesday. From piecing together the evidence, that must have been 17/6/1998. I thought the interview went well. I talked to the heads of development and software development, both techies. From later experience I must say that it's a royal PITA (and almost a garaunteed rejection) talking with managers or HR staff. Anyway, that Friday I got a call saying that they'd accepted me and that I had the job. When could I start?

So the mad rush was then on to find me a place to live. The next day we got the Saturday newspaper with all the classified ads. After the interview Mum and I had looked around the area. We had picked up a copy of The North Shore Times in a shopping centre. In it there happened to be an ad for a place very close. In total I think we had 3 or 4 places to look at and choose from. We (my parents and I) drove down on Sunday to look at them all. The first one we saw was the one advertised in the NST. Medium-ish room, share the house with asian girl and her boyfriend. Looked good but we decided we should still look at the other places. I can't remember the others too well. One was a boarding house that someone was moving out of. The owner had a lot of dogs living in the house as well and it reeked of dog urine. We said "we'll think about it" and tried to get out of there as fast as we could. Another place we caught the owner in the shower and almost walked away before she answered the door. Can't remember much else. We rushed back to accept the first place and just managed to catch Natasha before she left for a hockey game. That's right, Tash.

Lets see, that was Sunday. So Monday was another rush to move me down with enough stuff to last at least a little while. I started work on Tuesday. We couldn't move my bed down so the first week I slept on a foam mattress. I told mum on the phone that I was "hitting bottom, literally" when I slept on it. They came down the next weekend and we got me a proper bed.

So to finish up, it's been an eventful five years. In some ways I've changed, in some ways I haven't. It was a great learning experience. I got learn how to live (to a certain degree) in the real world and I learnt some things about myself. Now I'm kinda back where I left off. Lets hope I can finish the course this time and get the degree. Hopefully that will make things easier when I do try to restart my career. In the mean time I'd like to move into a place of my own in town and perhaps get a part-time job. Being close to my family is nice, but I'm getting fat and lazy. And I'm getting back into the old adolescent habit of blaiming my parents for everything.