Career Guidance

The school staff included no counselor to guide students in choosing a career, but I recall Mr. Millard in one of his classes talking a bit about various careers. As I recall he handed out a little pamphlet that listed potential incomes in various professions and engineering was indicated as having a top potential of about $50,000/year. I never achieved that in all the years I was at Shell. About the closest was the $35,000 I earned in 1975 when I worked part-time for Shell as a “consultant.” Perhaps that was the first “push” toward engineering as a career for me.

Although Gowrie high school did not include chemistry in the curriculum, somehow or other I had developed an interest in the subject. Perhaps I mentioned it to the superintendent (A.C. Anderson, who succeeded Leistra) and he gave me a couple of demo textbooks that he, as superintendent, had received from textbook vendors. One was in physics and the other chemistry. I think I read portions of the chemistry text so I had an idea of what it was about when I enrolled in junior college.

There was one incident that may have steered me in the direction of engineering. One evening, when we were still in the little brown house, I was at one of the summer band concerts. Somehow or other I became aware of, or possibly was introduced to, a cousin of Robert Blomgren (a year ahead of me in school but with whom I played on occasion — he lived in a house not far from us — actually when we children carried milk to Aunt Hulda and gradfather Strand we walked through their yard). I was impressed by this cousin (by name Jack Sederholm) who was described as being an engineer. Robert followed his cousin’s example and ended up as an engineer.