Nick, when I was 17, there were no computers that you could get near. The
year was 1955, and I was just as eager as you seem to be to prepare for what
I saw as the coming computer age. I had a part time job in a shoe store, and
was 2 years away from university. The store was small in a small town, and
the owner was a proud man, proud of the students he had working there who
had gon on to be judges, lawyers, politicians and such.

At the time I didn't think I would ever live up to his hopes for me, but I
tried my best and I learned a lot. A few years later, I realized that the
University education that I could get would not take me where I wanted to
go, so I left before graduation. Meanwhile I had done many jobs in
mechanical engineering, electronics manufacturing, and even forestry
research, always looking for employers and supervisors who were mentors for
their employees, and who helped them proceed.

It was not until 1965, when I was 27, that I found the job I was looking
for, as a computer hardware technician. Computers were just exiting from the
vacuum tube age, and the germanium switching transistors of the time were
considerably less reliable that today's high performance silicon; but the
time was short -- reliability improved, the fun was out of it, and by 1973 I
went on to different things, things that built on some of the other jobs I
had and people who trained me in the work that they loved to do and were
proud of doing.

My advice is that when you look for work while you continue your education
look for an employer who wants you to learn what he knows. My love affair
with the nuts and bolts of digital hardware was only 8 years, and 10 years
after I was 17. The people who taught me and the jobs that I had in that 10
year period, have been invaluable through the succeeding years. Don't focus
too narrowly on your chosen career, but do something that's fun for the
people you are working with. It will be fun for you and you'll learn a lot,
and some day it may be very useful to you. There'll be time for that narrow
focus on your chosen path, but meanwhile keep an eye on the big picture. You
never know when you may have to advance to something different.