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Knowledge should not be a prison
I graduated Highschool early, attending Junior College to complete my credits. Leaving gave me a head start to higher education while working. Win/win in my book. In the end, I left college for full-time work when I could no longer afford the costs, and my life unfolded from there.
What started as a sincere and unbridled interest in knowledge developed into a new skill set. Or so I thought. I focused on how to learn vs. what to learn. For years I studied how to study. I committed things to memory using every trick I could find. Learn a subject matter as deeply as possible. It was a heady time. As it turned out, it was more about a natural talent than a skill. I just did not have a word for it.
Having a deep and powerful connection to computing technology, I locked into advanced computing systems at 11 years old, and I was allowed to do part-time work under a remarkable engineer who cultivated my interest. I corrected punch cards to earn access to a time-shared computer. Computing opened doors for the rest of my life. It also created walls, but we will cover that in a bit.
Computing technology was the core of my learning back then; Its application was the focus. Farinon Electric opened up a world to me, and I drank it in. I worked in the R&D lab, design lab, manufacturing clean room, sheet metal shop…
