Long Days and Nights in an Alaskan Oilfield

Every now and then, someone comes along with a job that, unless you work in that field, you’d never realize existed. And then, when you find out it exists, it’s still hard to imagine exactly what that job entails. Jack Winslow is a Petroleum Engineer, working twelve-hour shifts on an Alaskan oilfield to make sure the drilling stations keep running smoothly and safely. Remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year? Jack’s team is responsible for avoiding those kinds of disasters on the North Slope. Sound stressful? Wait until you hear the rest of it.

Growing up in rural Alaska, Jack wanted to be a writer, but only in a vague sort of way. He attended the University of Alaska, Anchorage right after high school, only to drop out immediately. He worked odd jobs for a while, then re-enrolled at Anchorage for a year before transferring to the English department at Boise State University. Jack studied English with a concentration in Technical Communication, “Because the first advisor I came across when I first got there was the head of the Technical Communication section of the English department…His take on my SAT scores (which were high in both math and verbal) was that I'd be really jazzed about his pet major, and I pretty much was - although there's not really inherently any math in it.”

Jack graduated with plans to become a technical writer, but after graduation, he and his then-wife moved back to Alaska to be near her mother, who was ill. Jack wasn’t able to find work as a tech writer – Alaska didn’t exactly have a wealth of job opportunities for English majors – he “decided to pursue basically anything else than what I went to school for.”

Jack’s experience trying to find a job in rural Alaska is similar to what many recent graduates are facing all over the nation in today’s artic economic climate. “I did all the things they always tell you to do. I applied for everything, and I also dropped off resumes to anybody I thought employed tech writers, whether they were hiring or not. I applied for graphic design jobs, any kind of document production/generation work, basically anything that had even the most tenuous connection to anything I'd studied in school. The closest I got was a job creating some kind of monthly real estate newsletter for a professional association (I was first runner up).”

After months of temporary odd jobs and anxiety, Jack got the tip that would shape his career. “My brother-in-law got a job working on the North Slope, as he had returned to Alaska at the same time we had. He told me that it paid well, although it was long hours and grueling work. It seemed to be paying about how much they told me I'd be making when I left school, so I applied.” He was accepted, unsurprisingly: “The initial job is so unpleasant that there's enough turnover that they can hire pretty much anyone who applies…For some reason, I stuck it out in that first horrible job for two and a half years.”

Jack eventually got promoted out of the difficult and dirty first-line work on the oilfield, and after about six years he was working as “what's loosely termed a Petroleum Engineer in the group that includes the supervisors of that first position I had taken - which is one of the brass rings for most of the people who stick around up there.” The hours are still long, and his life is complicated by the fact that after his first marriage ended in divorce, he met and married his current wife, who lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Jack lives on the oil field half the time, working twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, for two weeks at a time. Then he has two weeks off to go back home to Portland. “I end up missing things because they happen to fall during the time I am at work, and it's just unrealistic to try to adjust my schedule for everything I might want to do. I can get really special occasions scheduled (I went home for my wife's college graduation) but in general, if I'm home when something happens I can go, and otherwise too bad.” Jack doesn’t have children, but he recognizes that the members of his team who do often miss important milestones. Still, the pay is good, and he gets half the year off, albeit in two-week blocks.

So what exactly does a Petroleum Engineer do for twelve hours at a stretch? In Jack’s words,“a typical work day starts at 4:30 (am or pm depending on if I am working days or nights). The guy who does my job for the other 12 hours fills me in on what happened during his shift. We then attend the first meeting of my day, with one of the other work-groups, as they often require the services of my team. That runs for about half an hour. If I'm working days, I then go to the morning meeting of our larger team. If I'm working nights, that meeting marks the end of my day. During that meeting, we start by discussing safety issues, then we quickly go over the work that was completed over the prior 24 hours and how it might impact others in the group.”

“Then breakfast, and after that I catch up with the dispatcher of my work group. I supervise pumping services, which is a collection of two-person teams who run pumps the size of tractor-trailers, which can move fluids at rates of 5 barrels per minute at pressures of 5000 psi. The rest of the day consists of coordinating the pump crews to work on our priority jobs, as given to us from our other work groups, the Operations team, and town. Our other work groups give us work that is basically in support of their jobs. Operations gives us work that supports the day-to-day operations of the wells. Town gives us work that generates more production or is used to evaluate the wells for the safety of the operation or for compliance with State and Federal regulations.”
And there are plenty of regulations. “There's a certain amount of required yearly training. Most of it is OSHA compliance stuff -- first aid/CPR, etc. I'm required to be trained in how to manifest waste that is injected in disposal wells - that's an EPA requirement. I'm required to take what's called Well Control school. It's a biannual week-long course which teaches (or reminds) the engineer how to deal with blowouts. It also covers various pressure-control equipment. There's a lot of math.”

If you’re interested in becoming a Petroleum Engineer, Jack recommends either being prepared to put in your time as a contractor and come up through the ranks or getting an engineering degree or some kind. And to really succeed, you’ll need to hone your creative problem-solving skills. “We're constantly being asked to figure out how to find and eliminate the risks before they cause an incident - which can be difficult when so many eyes have been looking at a task already, or when the tasks have been done so many times that they've become routine.”

Jack also has advice for recent grads just starting out. “If you can manage to do what you love, that's great - but the world needs a lot more fry cooks than it has people who love to do that. I'd advise working for a little while before going to school, if that's going to be a goal. I'd also recommend not settling down into a job for very long. It's probably not great for employers, but if you can shift from job to job every six months or so, I think you can get a fairly good idea of what that line of work holds for you. Try to invest a good chunk of time in something creative, whether it's got anything to do with what you want to do for a living or not. It might be writing, or painting, or music, but it might be gardening, or small engine repair, or cooking. Find something you really love to do, and spend time doing it every day if you can. If you can figure out a way to incorporate any of that in what you do for a living, you'll be miles ahead and you'll get a lot more out of your work.”

You Shoot Like A Girl: Interview with a Frag Doll

Can you imagine getting paid to play video games? I’m not talking about a job where gaming is considered “research” for the work you eventually produce, like play-testing, games journalism, or (potentially NSFW) working for the ESRB. I’m talking about a job where your main responsibility is to be awesome at video games. That’s what the women of Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls do, and I was able to talk to three of the Dolls via e-mail to learn a little bit more about how they became professional gamers and why it’s the perfect job for them.

According to the official Frag Dolls web site, “The Frag Dolls are a team of professional female gamers recruited by Ubisoft to promote their video games and represent the presence of women in the game industry.” This means that they compete in tournaments, attend gaming conventions and industry events, and advocate for women in the gaming industry through public appearances, blogs, and social networking. In other words, they live and breathe video games. Can you imagine anything better?

There are currently nine Dolls on the team, and since their debut in 2004 (in which they won by shut-out at the Rainbow Six: Black Arrow tournament), competition for any vacancies that arise has been fierce. I received replies from Ann-Marie Wilson, Krystal Herring, and Lanai Gara, also known as Spectra, Siren, and Fidget, respectively. Of course, nobody is born a Frag Doll – and Siren noted that “As a team of 8, every girl has different backgrounds and education.” Spectra has a communications degree and worked in the film industry and as a flight attendant before she answered a casting call to be a Frag Doll in 2009. Siren worked as a professional makeup artist, doing makeup for runway shows, weddings, photo shoots, and retail. Others have backgrounds in fields as divers as art, computing, psychology, and human resources.

So what does a Frag Doll do in a day? Spectra replied, “currently I spend most of my days working from home on my computer. I have a number of projects to work on for our website and social media outlets. On certain days of the week I have gaming events I need to be online for, I have conference calls and other administrative jobs to do for our team.” Fidget’s schedule is similar. “Normally I wake up, get onto the laptop, do emails, update our social networks, play video games whenever we have community game nights or Frag Doll Fridays and work on videos that are coming up.” All the Dolls write blogs and participate in community events, and they travel all over the country to compete and participate in conventions as needed.

Being a Frag Doll sounds like a full-time job, but many of the Dolls have other responsibilities on top of their team duties. Fidget balances her work with being a mom; Morgan Romine, the team captain, is a full-time graduate student. Faith Harrison’s official profile reveals that she juggles a job as a computer technician, working for the Dolls, studying for her bachelor’s in Computer Science, and being a mom to her four-year-old son.

The Dolls all have two things in common: they all started gaming at a young age, and they all love their work. But it’s not without drawbacks. I asked everyone what the worst part of their jobs were, and Spectra gave this surprising response: “Not having enough time to play video games. I would love to spend all day playing one game. Being able to spend my time to master it and be the best. Before I got this job I would have long stretches of time off devoted to gaming. Now I have to schedule my game time. It’s hard to be really good at any one game. I have to play a lot of different games and I never have the time needed to reach the level of skill I feel like others expect from me. It can be frustrating.”

How do you become a Frag Doll? When the group began, Ubisoft issued a casting call and women gamers from all over the country competed for eight slots. Now, however, there is a Cadettes program, sort of a professional gaming internship for women. As current Dolls “retire,” their replacements will be drawn from the available pool of Cadettes. This is how Siren was hired; she played with Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers, an all-female group of non-professional competitive gamers, then was accepted into the Cadettes for a while before being hired as a full-on Frag Doll. Her advice? “Learn as much as you can from anyone willing to teach you, be persistent and

make great contacts.” And Spectra noted that while “being a Frag Doll is a great position for any dedicated female gamer looking to get into professional gaming or wanting a career in the game industry. But it isn’t the only way. There are lots of opportunities out there…the really talented and motivated will create their own opportunities.”

Fidget offers similar advice to anyone pursuing a new career: “- Be determined and never give up, no matter what people tell you.” Additionally, she believes in going for a career you want to be in for the long haul. “Do something you enjoy and can see yourself doing 20 years later in. Don't do something just for the money.” And Spectra offered this encouragement: “think about what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and find a job that lets you do that. You would be surprised what you can make a living doing.”

This article would have been impossible without the help of Morgan Romine (AKA Rhoulette), who distributed the questionnaire among the team and endured my ceaseless nagging. For more information on the Frag Dolls and to see when they may be coming to a city near you, check out their web site at www.fragdolls.com. Image courtesy of Ubisoft.

Three Bands, Thirty Five Students, No Regrets

When you think of a professional musician, you probably picture one of these two scenarios: a fabulously wealthy rock star, riding in gold limousines and surrounded by screaming fans, or – if you’re a little more pessimistic – a starving artist who sleeps all day, plays all night, and probably still lives in his parents’ basement. But there are thousands of working musicians all over the world who, like Dan Huber, live somewhere in between. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to make your living as an artist, read on – Dan, via email, was kind enough to give Professional Detours some insight into how he makes it work.

Dan started taking piano lessons in grade school and switched to guitar and bass later, but it wasn’t until high school that he really started to get serious about music as a career. “Maumee High had an excellent music theory course,” Dan recalled. “That started me on my current path.”

Dan went to Ohio University and studied music. He took advantage of a program that let him “[design] my own music major which I called Versatile Musicianship. Ohio University was the second school in the country to allow student to pick their own courses, and for this I am very grateful. This meant I could take women's history, African American poetry, kayaking and whatever else I damn well pleased.”

Still, the vast majority of Dan’s classes were in music and music theory. “I studied primarily under David Messina, bassist for the West Virginia Symphony, as well as with several great jazz instructors and radio host Bill McGlaughlin was once guest conductor of the orchestra at this time. I played in the school's jazz ensembles, orchestra, and always played in at least 2 rock bands as well.” A versatile musician, indeed.

After graduating from Ohio University in 2002, Dan moved back to his hometown and worked a day job as a house painter while playing gigs on weekends. In 2004, after having “seen New York city and wanting a larger environment in which to flounder,” Dan moved to Chicago. While he took a few part-time jobs in Chicago to help make ends meet, he tried to choose jobs that met a certain criteria: “that they help someone directly (such as a homeless shelter) or are enjoyable (deckhand on a boat) or good exercise (dog walking).” But for Dan, It’s always been about the music. “The primary challenge has always been making any money whatsoever while spending as little time working non-music jobs as possible.” In other words, instead of working full-time elsewhere and squeezing in music in around the edges, music has always been Dan’s focus, and when time allowed, tried to make some money on the side.

“After 6 years of working part time jobs and playing music and teaching in Chicago, I finally had gotten to the point where I had enough students to quit other extraneous work,” Dan said. So what’s a typical day like for a professional musician? “I sleep till 9, get up and practice bass or guitar until I leave for teaching lessons, which is around 3 PM. I drive an hour through Chicago rush hour to teach in the suburbs at a small music store, A Sound Education, which has been in business 10 years; I have been there 5+. Then after that I go to band practice or drive to a gig. Two of my bands, Old Shoe and Antony Ablan, are very active and play anywhere within a 6 hour drive, although I have on occasion flown to Arizona or farther to play with Mos Funnel.”

Dan works with thirty-five students and twenty professional musicians, so keeping track of everything is challenging at best. And, of course, as with any freelancer, finances are often a concern. “You have to decide if you care about money or not,” Dan noted, “because as a musician only a very few will make any significant money, and if so it may take decades. So, if you want to be middle class and still full-time, you are wise to start teaching lessons, and developing your ability to play songs by ear and read music.” Teaching, in fact, has been critical to allowing Dan to quit his outside part-time jobs. “If you become a music teacher, you no longer need to be concerned whether each gig pays. In fact, you may find most don't pay very much at all! When I get paid, I consider myself lucky and each dollar is precious.”

Although having an education in music is important if you plan to teach lessons, “the main thing people need to do is play as much as humanly possible, with as many different people, styles, etc, and listen to a wide variety of music, and support local music whenever possible…The main thing is focusing on the art,” Dan said, “because a lot of other musicians will fall by the wayside, give up, all sorts of relationship and money issues will get in the way, but the best thing to do is either play as much as possible or develop a business plan. I prefer not to plan. I never have money to invest in my bands, so I have to earn my keep by being [expletive] excellent.”

Dan’s success has by no means peaked, and if you’re interested in learning more about his bands, there are plenty of opportunities to do so. If you’re in the Chicago area, keep an eye out for Old Shoe’s festival in September. “We are inviting all the best bands from the entire region, all the ones we have shared festival bills with, some incredible talent.” Old Shoe is also playing several other festivals in the Midwest, including Hoodilidoo in Lacota, Michigan; The Grateful Garcia Gathering in Black River Falls, Wisconsin; the Field Trip Festival in South Elgin,Illinois; and Widow's Peak in Earlville, Illinois. Other shows and gig information can be found on Old Shoe’s web site.

If you’re not near any of the festival locations, you can buy Old Shoe’s first album at this link or check out Dan’s YouTube channel for tour highlights. Old Shoe is releasing their second album on July 23; check the band’s web site for details. And Dan’s other bands are releasing albums this summer as well – Joseph Messing and the Wise Men’s new album is coming out in July 2, and Antony Ablan and the Tramps has an album coming out on July 22. All three releases include release shows at Chicago venues; check the individual band web sites for all the details.

Bracing for Re-Entry: A Mom Goes Back To Work After 21 Years at Home

Mary Lynn Kummerer credits a bad case of the chicken pox for giving her a future in accounting. While she was home sick with the virus for a few weeks during Kindergarten, her older brother, then a high school student, spent some time teaching her basic math skills while she recovered. “I guess he figured he had a captive audience,” Mary Lynn chuckled during a phone interview. But her knack for numbers didn’t disappear when the last of her chicken pox scars faded, and she’s been able to build an amazing career as a bookkeeper even after a whopping twenty-one year absence from the work force. (Twenty-one years and seven days, Mary Lynn noted – but who’s counting?)

Mary Lynn’s story is remarkable because of this long absence and the triumph over adversity that allowed her to re-enter the workforce after so many years. We here at Professional Detours are very aware of the difficult decisions working families – particularly moms – must make, not the least of which is whether or not to stay home with the kids. Whether you’ve opted out, opted in, or are trying to decide between the two, we hope that Mary Lynn’s story gives you some insight into what “opting out” really means.

Mary Lynn got her feet wet by becoming the Treasurer of her school’s chapter of Junior Achievement, took her first clerical class as a senior in high school. Originally, she had wanted to be a teacher, but when she learned how much math was involved in accounting, she knew she’d found her calling. “I didn't know if I wanted to get married or not,” she said. “I was the worst person in the class when it came to typing, but whenever we did anything that involved math, everybody came to me for help. Discounts and percentages were especially confusing to the rest of the class.”

She did end up getting married, but not right after high school. In the meantime, she went to college and obtained a degree in Business Administration. During her senior year, she was hired by a professor who also worked at an electrical products distributor. “[He]hired somebody from one of his classes every year to help get ready for the audit, so it was only supposed to be a temp job, but when I graduated in June I didn’t have another job lined up. So they made me an accounts payable clerk.” After a while, the young and inexperienced payroll clerk stopped paying the health insurance premiums, so she and Mary Lynn switched jobs.

By then, Mary Lynn had gotten married, and in 1982, while expecting her first child, she got laid off when the company downsized. “I got unemployment for getting laid off,” she recalled, “and they sent me to a job interview. I was, like, five months pregnant, and I wore the shirt that made me look the biggest, and the guy kept looking at me, and eventually he asked, ‘Are you planning on…starting a family?” Mary Lynn laughed at the memory. “Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.”

But she wasn’t really looking to go back to work at the time anyway. Her staying home with the kids was a foregone conclusion. “We had talked about it,” Mary Lynn told me, “and we decided that if I did continue to work, any money I did make would basically go to daycare, and it just happened that I got laid off on St. Patrick’s day of 1982 and then [my daughter] was born in August.”

Mary Lynn had two daughters and, as they grew, she got involved in their school activities. They were heavily involved in the Girl Scouts, and Mary Lynn was one of three troop leaders and was the recruiter for the elementary school and, later, the junior high and high schools her daughters attended. “I was in charge of all the bookkeeping, at least for our troop. Things didn’t really change, we didn’t have much money so we were always looking for something cheap to do,” she laughed.

Her girls grew up and went to college, and Mary Lynn was happily beginning to look forward to her retirement years, when suddenly, her husband of more than 23 dropped a bombshell: he was moving out and wanted a divorce. Devastated and terrified, Mary Lynn had no choice. “I hadn’t worked for twenty-one years and seven days…I was applying for different jobs and sending my resume out, and I wasn’t getting anything back.” So she took a job at a big-box discount retail store while she continued applying for every bookkeeping and accounting job she could find.

“I also called the University and they had this women’s program that would help homemakers get jobs, but I found out I didn’t qualify because I lived [just across the state line]. But they did put me in touch with a program called WIA, that helped people who were displaced or had lost their jobs and needed retraining.” The WIA is actually a federal program, and it stands for the Workforce Investment Act (click here for a map with links to the WIA programs in each state). Through this program, she was able to take some skills tests and enroll in a placement program. Mary Lynn did well on the math section of the test “until I got to the question where it asked you to divide fractions, and I totally…wow. I took the rest of the test, and I went back and I actually figured it out. It went as high as the 12^th grade level, and they didn’t even finish grading it because I’d already reached the maximum score. When I got the results, I called my mom and I said, ‘I’ve got a brain, and it still works!’”

Mary Lynn also took some classes at the community college to update her skills. She learned Quickbooks and Peachtree, but “What they teach you in those classes can’t prepare you because there is so much more. They just give you a brief overview, but then you can customize it as much as you want.” The technology was the most difficult part of seeking a new job after spending so long as a stay at home mom. “When I was in college, our computer classes, you had to use punch cards. Going to MS Word and Excel, it was so demanding.” But now that she’s mastered it, she uses it for everything. “When things happen, I got right to the computer and make my spreadsheets about what I need to do,” she said, recounting how she used Excel to keep track of her mother and stepfather’s estate after they passed away in 2009.

Mary Lynn got her lucky break when her current boss, the owner of a small engineering and IT support firm, took a chance. “He took a big chance,” Mary Lynn admits, by hiring someone who had been out of the workforce for many years and whose technological skills were still developing. “He liked the fact that I had an accounting degree.” And he was willing to put in a little time for on-the-job training for an employee he felt would be loyal and committed. “If I needed help, [my boss] would say, ‘Ok, do this, do that.’ He would show me how to do it.” And the risk seems to have paid off for them both – she’s been the office manager at her current company for over four years now.

Getting a job in a field she enjoys has been crucial to Mary Lynn’s confidence as well as her financial independence. A little while after getting her current job, “one of our customers was having a problem with Quickbooks,” she recalled. “My boss said, ‘Talk to Mary Lynn, she knows everything about Quickbooks!’ It made me feel good that I could conquer that and that I could succeed at it.’”

Mary Lynn advises anyone re-entering the workforce after a long hiatus to look into any free programs offered by your state or local governments. She also checked into the low-fee courses at her local community college. And above all, don’t give up. “If I can do it,” she said, “anyone can do it!”

"Why, Grampa?" How One Question Inspired a Recycling Revolution

If you’ve ever changed the oil in your car, you know what a mess the old used filter is. Some of the dirty oil stays inside it no matter how hard you try to drain it, and it can’t be recycled – all the steel trapped inside is contaminated and therefore unusable. There really isn’t anything useful to do with a used oil filter, so we have no choice but to haul them off to landfills – and we do this in mass quantities. Over 500 million oil filters are manufactured in the U.S. each year, comprised of 150,000 tons of steel and 18 million gallons of oil. That’s a lot of resources to throw away, but we really don’t have a choice – except that now, thanks to Jerry McRae, we do.

Round about 1993, Jerry McRae took his grandson on a business trip to a processing plant where used motor oil was being recycled. As the younger McRae looked out over the sea of used oil filters piled up around the plant, he innocently asked his grandfather what would happen after the oil was drained out. Jerry explained that they would go to the landfill, and his grandson was shocked and dismayed. “Why don’t they just sell that steel to a scrap dealer?” he asked.

“I said, well, it’s kind of complicated,” Jerry told me in a phone interview, “and I went into detail on telling him why it couldn’t be done. But the more I talked, the more I convinced myself that, well, it could be done. So I said to myself, Jerry, you’re a furnace builder, you know how to do this. And so I started on a design.” Jerry had an idea, but it would take two pivotal client relationships and an air sickness bag to turn it into a prototype worthy of a federal patent application.

Jerry’s career had already spanned four decades in the combustion industry, starting in 1957 with his first job at a refractory. “If you look [refractory] up in the dictionary, it means stubborn. These are products that are stubborn to burn, they do not burn up, so they’re used to line furnaces. I was totally taken in by that. The guy that hired me said, “Jerry if you get involved in this company, you will never leave it for the rest of your life. Well, I’ve never left the industry, and I’ve always been fascinated with furnaces and fire.” Jerry worked for that company for twelve years, then started his own business as a manufacturer and distributor of, among other things, furnaces for the disposal of medical waste.

In 1982, during the “Oil Patch Crash” that devastated Texas’ industrial economy, ten of Jerry’s clients with contracts totaling nearly ten million dollars declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Jerry closed up shop. He started a new company repairing furnace systems, then founded his current business, McRae Combustion, in 1990. It was this company, which sought to manufacture thermal equipment that would clean up the environment, like Jerry’s patented medical waste incinerator, which would burn medical waste (known as "Red Bag Waste") and used the clean heat generated by the incinerator to fire a boiler for Hospital Steam Sterilization. Jerry also designed and built custom afterburner systems that burned off toxic fumes coming out of industrial equipment, reducing it to inert gases.

It was through this line of work that Jerry happened to take his grandson to the job site where the mountains of used oil filters inspired the simple question that changed the world. “I was going out into one of my clients businesses to basically to help them figure out how to heat the waste oil that they had,” Jerry said. “They were an oil collector, we never even discussed filters with them.” But he didn’t need to. A year or so after that visit, Jerry got a call from a man named Jim Nickerson of Nickco recycling. Nickco had had a contract to process used tank tract (the tread on tank “tires”) and recover the rubber and aluminum. That contract had ended, and Jim wanted Jerry to help him convert that furnace into a machine that would – of all things – recover the steel from used oil filters. “I said, ‘This isn’t going to be a great job, because it wasn’t built to do this,’” Jerry recalled, “but we did it! In fact, it’s still in operation. But I was never pleased with that design, because I felt like it wasn’t as good as it could be.”

Jerry then went to see another client who wanted to do the same thing. He was trying to use an industrial oven to process the oil filters, but the temperatures required were so high that the oven was melting and it just wasn’t working. But Jerry knew he could make it work, so on his flight home, he took the nearest scrap of paper he could find and started to sketch out a plan. “I took a barf bag, of all things…Just as a side note, barf bags used to all be white. Now they come in every color of the rainbow, and they don’t make very good scratch paper. But back then, they were all white. So I took this barf bag and I sketched up a design that is very similar to what, ultimately, I got a patent on. I still have that barf bag, and it’s framed and hanging on my wall.” His patent for the idea was awarded in 2001.

Jerry McRae started out as a man with a lot of knowledge and expertise in his field – combustion and waste processing – and suddenly, thanks to a simple question from his grandson, became a man with an idea. But his transformation from a businessman to an inventor wasn’t complete until that second “aha” moment – when he realized that there was a real market for his products. Nobody else had ever made furnaces like these before.

“The system is totally green,” he said proudly. “I’m a Christian man, and I believe that everything is God-given to us, and if we waste it, we’re wasting something that God has given to us…[my system] takes used oil filters, which are one of the nastiest products on the Earth, and it turns it into something useful. It saves the steel, it saves half of the oil that was in that block, and it cleans up all of the energy that is contained in the oil.”

“You can actually generate electricity from the by-product coming off of my product,” Jerry noted. “But that’s not what we normally use the heat for, we normally use the heat to process the oil that’s being collected by the plant. In other words, we use that heated oil to clean up the rest of the oil so that they can then sell it. But here’s the key to it, my system runs off the oil that’s reclaimed.” And in addition to being good for the environment, it’s good for the pocketbook, too – Jerry’s clients make very good money selling what was once useless, hazardous waste to scrap dealers and oil processing plants to be recycled into industrial and consumer products.

Jerry advises young people seeking jobs to find a career they really, truly love, “Because you’re at your work more than you’re at home. And sometimes it takes changing jobs several times before you find that job that you like. The key to success isn’t being some genius or mastermind or inventor, but it’s being persistent. In other words, stick with it! It might take you a year or two, or more than that – in my case it’s taken a whole lifetime.”

Additionally, aspiring entrepreneurs have an additional row to hoe – getting the experience they need to succeed before attempting to strike out on their own. “If you want to start your own business, find out what you want to do and then go work for someone else. Get your business legs under you. Most people think that just because a guy starts his own company he’s going to be driving a Mercedes and flying a personal jet in a few weeks. Most of us guys are just human beings who have good ideas, and most of us have some background doing something else first. I love designing furnaces, I love solving problems, and I changed direction a few years back. After I decided I would never work building furnaces in the oil patch again, I decided I wanted to help clean up the environment, and our equipment does.”

To learn more about Jerry McRae’s systems and the impact of used oil filters on our landfills, visit http://www.mcraecombustion.com.

How Civil Service Is Like A Mental Hospital

What do public administration and working as a mental health technician have in common? Leslie Kohli. She has used what she learned in her studies as a psychology undergraduate to do both jobs, with plenty of interesting twists and turns in between.

Many students, faced with the question of choosing a major, opt for (or are advised to pursue) an “all-purpose” degree that will serve them well in almost any profession. Business, English, communications, and psychology are all common choices. Leslie Kohli chose to pursue a psychology degree out of a real desire to practice psychology and help others, but after graduation she discovered just how versatile that course of study could be.

Although her first career aspiration was to be a Broadway performer, Leslie realized at a young age that the performing arts were a risky proposition. So she decided by the time she was in high school that, as she told me in a phone interview, “I wanted to do something working with people and something where I would help people, and [psychology] seemed the most interesting to me, and I thought that would be helpful to me no matter what I did.” Was it? “It definitely has been. The problem was…that psychology degree is kind of like a communications degree – standalone, it’s hard to find a good job. Whether it’s dealing with people, how to manage people, how to communicate with people, It definitely helps with whatever you’re doing, but without going on and getting your master’s, there’s very little you can do with it.”

After college, Leslie moved back home and started looking for that perfect job. She took a job at the Medical College of Ohio (now the University of Toledo Medical Center), where she became the third generation of women in her family to work for that particular hospital. “I knew that if I could get a job [at MCO], they always hire within first, and they had an adult as well as an Adolescent & Youth center, and I really wanted a job there, but they didn’t have an opening. So I worked as an administrative assistant in billing, and then I got a job doing medical records, and then I worked in the medical school for two months, and then finally they had an opening in the adult mental health ward as a medical health technician.”

Leslie knew where she wanted to work – her mother and two of her aunts had spent their whole careers at MCO – so she took the first position available there and worked her way gradually into the field of her choice. When you have an “all-purpose” degree like psychology, communications, or one of the humanities, the side-step approach is especially effective. People who are looking for work experience should take entry-level jobs that will help them build relationships with those in related fields who can put in a good word for them when a vacancy appears.

Leslie loved her job in the adult mental health ward, and was able to use her psychology degree to its fullest without going to graduate school. “I loved that job, and I learned a lot,” she says, but unfortunately, the hospital closed the adult psychiatric unit a few years later. “They took all of us who were first-shift full-time and tried to divide us all up into second and third shift part-time, and I went to the child/adolescent psych unit. That’s where I really wanted to be, but it was only part time and I couldn’t really live on that.”

Leslie, seeing the writing on the wall, applied to law school. While she was waiting to hear if she was accepted, she also applied to be a probation officer, and she was accepted for that job. “It was the best of both worlds. It was related to the law, but I worked with the substance abuse cases, so I got to use my psychology degree and lead AA and NA groups,” she says. “I got to use my psychology degree along with my interest in law, and that’s what let me know for sure that I really did want to go to law school.”

Leslie was accepted into law school and, because of the strict requirements of the program, had to leave her job as a probation officer. But she had enjoyed that job so much that she had a hard time deciding between specializing in criminal law and family law, which would allow her to use her psychology background. So she tried a little bit of everything. “I did a prosecutor’s clinic, I did a public defender’s program for about two months to see what it was like on the other side. I did an internship doing mediation in the juvenile court, and that was the psychology part coming back again, because I got to work with kids and their families. I also did another prosecutor’s internship in Wake County, NC, and I did the mediation program again there.” All these internships helped her get a feel for the different types of law practice and prepared her for her first job after graduation.

Leslie started working for a law firm in an administrative capacity before she got her bar exam results, and when she passed, they offered her a position as an attorney. “It was not at all doing what I wanted to do, because it was all medical malpractice and personal injury. They let me do all their criminal stuff, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing.” By then, Leslie also had a young daughter and was working a lot of hours, so when her contract expired a year and a half later, she opted not to renew. It was a hard decision because she didn’t have another job lined up, but Leslie’s faith that things would work out for the best allowed her to take a giant leap into uncertain territory.

Leslie started her own law practice and struggled with financial uncertainty while she waited to see if she was going to be able to maintain a client base. She was accepted as a public defender for three local suburb courts, which occupied her time at least three days a week, and started building her client list through referrals. Ten months later, Leslie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and a year after that she passed away. As difficult as it was, Leslie was glad that she was able to have the flexibility of being self-employed so that she could help take care of her mother and spend her remaining days with her. Furthermore, about a year after Leslie left the law firm, they were investigated by the FBI for possible embezzlement. “As the newest attorney,” Leslie said, “I know I would have been the scapegoat. God was really looking out for me.”

Four years later, on a trip to New York with her daughter, Leslie suddenly got a call from someone she’d gone to law school with offering her a temporary position as an attorney for the United Auto Workers. The pay was excellent, but they needed her immediately . Leslie cut her trip short and returned to Toledo so she could start Monday. Six months later, the attorney Leslie had replaced came back from medical leave, and three weeks after that, Leslie’s father suffered a debilitating stroke. Leslie went back to private practice, and once again was thankful for the flexibility in her schedule that allowed her to get through her family crisis. “That was a really hard year, financially, and emotionally because I was trying to be there for my dad, and for my daughter, because she was only in about second grade at the time.”

A year later, a chance encounter with an old friend from grade school opened a door to a whole new career path. Her friend was married to one of the three trustees who sat on the governing board of Springfield Township, where Leslie lives. “We were helping a friend move and afterward we were just sitting around chatting, and [my friend’s husband] had said how he thought I would make a really good fiscal officer for the township. At that time they had a fiscal officer, so it was mostly just talk.” But suddenly, three months later, the township’s fiscal adviser resigned. That night, her friend’s husband called her and asked her if she’d like to interview for the job. Normally, the fiscal officer is an elected position, but in the case of a mid-term resignation, an appointment is made. Leslie became the new fiscal officer in July of 2006, and when the Township Administrator resigned the following February, Leslie (and thirty other people) applied for his vacancy. “I didn’t have any administrative experience, but I had a law degree, which made people feel like I had some intelligence. But I think what really won people over was that I had eight months of experience with this township…If I had not had eight months of relationships with these people, I would never have gotten that job. I probably would never have even known it was open to apply for.”

“I think a lot of people think that if you go to school for one thing, there’s only certain things you can do, and that’s not true,” said Leslie. “When I went to law school, they gave us this piece of paper that was like, okay, here are 100 or 150 different jobs that you can find yourself in that are non-legal. At the time, I knew nothing about being an administrator, but looking back, I realized that was probably on the list.”

And she loves it. “I think it’s a niche for me. I think it’s right up my alley because I get to work with people -- part of my job as administrator is human resource and personnel issues, and benefits and stuff. But it’s also really diverse...I’m the kind of person who I can’t see myself being anywhere for ten years because I get bored too easily. But this job, I could do for ten years because one day I’m looking at maps trying to plan where the new roads should go and another day I’m writing a grant to get a homeless shelter, and sometimes I’m looking at contracts. I use my law degree a lot because, whether we’re looking at who we get our trash service from or what’s going on with our police force, it’s all contracts. So that’s why I love my job, because I never get bored.”

Leslie’s story has plenty of lessons for students and recent grads. If you know the general field you’re interested in, it’s important to get a foot in the door and stat building relationships that can help you move up. “Realize that a Master’s of Something is important, but experience is just as important,” said Leslie. “I think it makes just as much sense to get your master’s while you’re getting the experience. Because people will be like, oh that’s great, you’ve got an MBA, but you don’t have any experience, so you’re not going to get the job. And I you think you want to work in, for instance, healthcare, get a job in a hospital, even if it’s not in the specific area you want to end up in.”

And if you don’t know what field you’re interested in, Leslie advises that you do as Danny Dunston did and think about what kinds of things you enjoy. “You may not even know what job would make you happy, but what kinds of things do you enjoy? For me, it’s not really the politics aspect of it. If I really, truly think about it, I love my job because: one, the diversity, it’s always changing, and I don’t get bored. Two, I get to organize things, and three, I get to manage people. I could probably do that in a lot of different settings and be happy. And I’m constantly learning new things. So that’s what makes me tick, that’s why I love my job.”

Danny Dunston Takes Leap of Faith, Discovers He Had Parachute All Along

Danny Dunston was like most kids growing up in the 1980s: he liked comic books, playing sports, and professional wrestling. He even wanted to be a pro wrestler when he grew up, because, as he says, “they were bad-ass. They got the women, they smack down the bad guys, they drove fancy cars, stuff like that.”

Like many wrestling fans, Danny was disappointed when he discovered that professional wrestling was staged (aka “Sports Entertainment”), so when people asked him what he wanted to be, he changed his answer to “comic book artist.” But like most kids, Danny grew up without really taking his future career seriously. As he recalled during our phone interview, “I liked a lot of stuff, but I never had any pinpointed interest whatsoever. I liked to draw, but I also liked football, and I never wanted to be a footballer. I never had any real career thoughts in mind, at all, even when I left high school.”

Sound familiar? While some kids grow up knowing exactly what they want to do and stick with that career choice for life, most of us take a winding path to find our vocational happiness. (That’s sort of the point of this whole blog, in fact.) And Danny’s story encapsulates a common theme for many young adults trying to sort out the problem of what to do.

“I never really thought about work,” Danny said. “I just thought, ‘great, I'm having so much fun now, but soon I'm going to have to get a job.’ I thought I was going to have to work with IBM and do computers [like my dad].”

So Danny floated through high school with a vague idea that, as he put it, “you go to college, they hand you your diploma and along with it a job, and that's your life.” He put off registering for courses during his first semester at the University of North Carolina for so long that eventually his father registered for him. His dad, ever practical, signed him up for business courses, and Danny decided to give it a try because it seemed like a good way to get a job that would make a lot of money.

“So I started taking classes,” Danny said, “but it never occurred to me to ask, do I like this, because I thought I didn't need to like it.” But he soon discovered that, unlike high school, he wasn’t able to coast through. “In high school, I would do my homework, and that was all I needed to make A’s and B’s, but in college you have to study and stay up late and memorize it, and if you don't like [the subject], you're going to hate your life.”

“So I ended up really not liking it, and my roommate was taking biology. So I asked, ‘What do you do with biology?’ He said you work with animals or something, and I thought, ‘I like animals,’ so I signed up for biology.”

It’s at this point in our phone interview that Danny assures me, “I do have a brain, but it doesn't fire sometimes.” But every year, thousands of college students choose majors for very similar reasons. Why? Because they don’t think it’s possible to find and pursue a job you really love.

After graduation, Danny worked in the basement of a university helping distribute chemicals to the various labs around campus. While the job itself wasn’t so bad – if boring – what he really didn’t like was the environment. “I had to work in a basement where they worked on lab animals, like monkeys and rats,” he said, “and once a week they'd kill all the rats. It was awful.”

So Danny quit working at the lab and got a job at a greenhouse that specialized in decorative grasses. He did well, but he was bored out of his mind. “I was getting kind of scared, because…in high school everything was fun. I was doing student council, hiking, football, track; in college and afterwards, it was awful, I sucked at everything, and it was horrible. I felt like something was wrong with me.”

Danny later realized that he was going into jobs with the mindset that “it’s work, you won’t like it,” and sure enough, he was bored and frustrated at every job he took. Eventually, he was so miserable that he decided to do some research and consider going back to school.

Danny read a lot of books about choosing a career, but the one he found most helpful was What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles. (Bolles also has version of the book directed at high school students, aptly titled What Color Is Your Parachute? For Teens.”) After completing the exercises in the book, Danny was left with four suggestions to pursue: architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, and mechanical engineering. He took his list to North Carolina State University and spoke with some professors in their design and engineering programs. They let him sit in on some classes, and Danny finally felt at home in landscape architecture. He said, “I felt like I would be on permanent vacation if I could be in that world.”

Danny decided to go for broke, move to Baltimore, and attend Morgan State University because they would allow him to start the following fall; NC State would have made him wait an extra year for admission. Over the summer, while he was preparing to move north, Danny took a class in Computer Assisted Design (CAD), and he fell in love with it. “I had so much fun,” he said. “I have ADD, but I could sit there for eight hours and work on autoCAD and have no problems.”

Danny finished graduate school and has been working as a landscape architect for a few years now, and even met his lovely wife – a building architect – while he was completing his internship at a Baltimore architecture firm. What advice does he have for students trying to decide what kind of career to pursue? “Don't go work at a grocer, don't work at the YMCA. Find out what kind of work you're interested in and go get an internship. That's how you're going to figure out if you're really going to like it.” If you can figure it out before you get to college and have to choose a major, even better: Danny said that "the kids at UNC who did the best were the ones who knew what they wanted to do and had done the research. They hit the ground running.”

But how do you find out what appeals to you? Check out books like What Color is Your Parachute. Keep reading this blog to learn about jobs that you might not ever have thought existed. Talk to people in fields that sound interesting to you. And keep in mind Danny’s words of wisdom: “The biggest lesson to learn is to figure out what you like and why you like it and go after that.”

Mike Shumake: An Educator Without A Classroom

Mike Shumake teaches English to high school students, but he hasn’t set foot in a classroom in two years. He works from his first-floor office in his lovely Raleigh, NC home, where he was kind enough to chat with me a few weeks ago.

When I walked in, I was amazed by the array of technological wonders that filled the room. Three large, flat-panel monitors sat on the desk, connected to a behemoth desktop computer. Each of the monitors was tiled with a dozen open programs that seemed to be constantly refreshing, updating, and chirping. Above the monitors, a large, flat, white screen sat opposite a digital projector that can act as a fourth monitor when needed. Mike's smartphone was on the desk next to him as we talked, and it frequently buzzed with text messages and voicemails throughout the interview.

Mike didn’t grow up planning to be a teacher. When he was in the sixth grade, he decided he wanted to be an industrial psychologist. “I know that’s an odd thing to want to be in sixth grade,” he admits. “There’s not really any psychology involved, it’s about improving processes.” Mike wanted to help companies improve their processes and run more efficiently. But when he finally got to college and took his first industrial psychology class, he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

“By the time I actually took industrial psychology as a class, I was a sophomore in college. I had Dr. Ludwig, at ASU, and I had a blast. I didn’t do too well in the actual class, but I thought, this guy [Dr. Ludwig]'s having a blast, I want to do that. I want to be a teacher.” So Mike changed his major to English with a secondary education certification. “From 6th grade to sophomore year in college, I was all about industrial psych,” he said, “and then, boom, I went with education.”

Mike taught for ten years in face-to-face classrooms, most of which were spent at alternative schools for high-risk students in North Carolina. When he finished his Master’s in School Administration at NCSU, Mike started looking for other opportunities and became interested in virtual classrooms. He started working with the North Carolina Virtual Public School in 2008 while still teaching full time in a traditional classroom at the alternative school. He stopped teaching in a face-to-face environment in 2009. Since then, he’s come to see the connection between industrial psychology and his current field. To Mike, virtual schools are a model of efficiency – no expensive buildings to heat and cool, no wasted travel time for teachers or students, and more freedom for both teachers and students.

So what does a day in the life of a virtual teacher look like? When you hear the term, "virtual classroom," you probably think of a group of kids in a traditional classroom at one school watching a televised lecture being given by a teacher in another school several states away. But online teaching has evolved well beyond what we envisioned in the 1980s. Mike does sometimes give live webcasts, but most of his communications with students revolve around social media like Twitter and learning platforms like Blackboard to disseminate assignments and promote discussion so that his students can explore the material at their own pace.

He showed me his setup and explained how he uses various components to reach the students in a variety of ways. He uses TweetDeck to manage his contacts and get realtime updates from his students via Twitter and Facebook. He has connected his Twitter feed to his Blackboard course so that he can push messages from Twitter to Blackboard and simultaneously reach kids via text on their cell phones. Since most teenagers today live wired lives, getting a text on their phones lets them know that they need to check in with the class Blackboard site for a new assignment.

Mike also uses social media to encourage discussion and gauge student engagement. He often sends out questions about the reading and reads the replies carefully to find out how well the students understand the texts. “With automated processes, I can send a text message out to 70 students, and it doesn't look an automated, impersonal auto-message. So I send a personal message, and the kids think, ‘Oh, he's asking my opinion on this,’ and that's how I get the responses and create powerful student-teacher relationships.”

Students in online courses can be very self-directed, but there are deadlines, just like in traditional classrooms. "Kids are always going to give you excuses about why their work is late. The excuse doesn't matter. You just have to ask, "When are you going to get caught up?" Mike's philosophy is to let the students set their own timetables for turning in late work as a way of making them take ownership for the new deadline…They care, or they wouldn't give you an excuse. So you have to use the excuse as a way to motivate them to get caught up. "

Mike’s virtual teaching methods are so effective that over 95% of his students consistently pass his courses. Perhaps this is one reason he was named North Carolina Virtual Public School’s “Teacher of the Year” in 2009. In addition to teaching online classes, which takes up the bulk of his day, he also works as an advocate for the expansion of virtual learning in North Carolina and across the country. He currently serves on the Governor’s E-Learning Committee and frequently gives presentations at conferences like the North Carolina Technology in Education Society(NCTIES), North Carolina Distance Learning Association(NCDLA), and the iNACOL’s annual national conference, the Virtual School Symposium. Not having to report to a school building each day gives him the freedom to travel and participate in these kinds of development opportunities. He also maintains a blog about virtual education,www.quickedtech.com, and he was recently asked to write for a national education reform blog, edreformer.com, as well.

Mike believes that online education is the way of the future. “Online education is growing by fifty percent every year, nationally. NCVPS (North Carolina Virtual Public School) has become the second largest state-run online school in the country, and a lot of people in North Carolina don't even know about it.” But with budget concerns and classroom overcrowding nationwide, online education and virtual schools may become more common over the next few years.

So what steps would someone need to take to become an online teacher? If you’re already certified to teach in a traditional classroom setting, it can be as simple as contacting your state or local virtual public school program, taking a few training courses, and setting up a the necessary technology at home. Mike’s advice is to join iNACOL and network at the national VSS conference to put yourself on the fast track.

If you’re a student considering a career in education or someone in another field considering a career change, the first step is to get certified to teach, either by obtaining a bachelor’s degree in education (including student teaching in a face-to-face classroom) or through a lateral-entry program (if you already have a bachelor’s in another area). Mike is having conversations encouraging faculty at North Carolina State University to create an online education certification “fast-track” program using distance learning(of course!) which would allow people with jobs in various industries to get certified to teach and become an online teacher without having to take time away from their professions (and lose pay) to return to school full-time. However, this program may take several more years to develop and implement.

Still, according to Mike, there are advantages to the traditional path to teacher certification. “Young people who want to do this, you’ve got to go to school. Go ahead and get that education degree. Suck it up, do your student teaching, do the face to face teaching. You’ve got to learn both sides, you have to learn to be a professional, and the face-to-face school is going to teach you that. But then, when you’re ready, you take the leap of faith and leave the classroom.” So Mike advises young people interested in virtual teaching as a career to find out the requirements for online teaching certification in your state and work on those while you’re completing your first few years in a face-to-face school.

Learn more about Mike Shumake at his blog, www.quickedtech.com, or find out more about online teaching and learning at www.inacol.org.

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