Dave Brainerd:
CLASS OF 1968
Natick High SchoolClass of 1968
Natick, MA
University of PhoenixClass of 2004
Phoenix, AZ
Marietta CollegeClass of 1972
Marietta, OH
Dave's Story
Life
Having gotten past my 52nd birthday, and still having no real idea what I want to do when I grew up, I decided to obtain an MBA. I am now 70 (time passes) and have obtained the degree, which opened several new opportunities. I am currently retired!; this was supposed to mean I travel a great deal. It actually meant I took care of my elderly dad who passed (at age 104) due to COVID-19. I still look forward to travel, once it is safe.
How did I get to this predicament? At one time I began college as a pre-med student, and after just three semesters of that I switched into a theater major. Before I graduated I had added majors in Speech, English, and Radio / TV, as well as a teaching certificate for secondary grades. Relatively quickly, I went through careers in all these fields, and ended up working at a hospital in the Boston area. Being bored one day, I applied to Boston University for a Masters in Linguistics. I never finished the program, but was introduced to computers. For the record, I don't recommend a graduate level class in Artificial Intelligence using LISP as the programming language as a reasonable introduction to computers.
I was lucky enough to be hired into a very small shop (4 programmers) where everyone was expected to work on everything, and to become an expert over time on all applications. We were told that "I don't know" was not an acceptable...Expand for more
answer, "Let me find out" was the expected response; the method for resolving was experimentation, none of this "look it up in a book" stuff. Best life lesson ever! For me, what the computer actually does is much more important than what the documentation says it will do (the question of which is correct is separate, and dealt with independently).
For the next 22 years I held various positions within the IT field, ending as a contractor doing COBOL and Database and Project Management tasks. I ended my working daze (not a typo) employed full time in the financial side of GE's power plant operations, traveling to sites throughout the US.
Let me close with a bit of the personal stuff to round out the picture. I am married, Diane (Maricola, NHS class of 1966) and I have no biological children but over the last 30 + years we have adopted 9; all came to us as teenagers (we are certified by the commonwealth as foster parents for teenagers, some might be tempted to say we are certifiable). Four of these children have masters degrees, and three have children of their own. All, like us, have pets of some sort; we currently have one rescue cat. Currently we are living in Worcester, living upstairs from Diane's brother.
My favorite movies: Black Orpheus; followed closely by Carnival of Souls, North by Northwest, and the original black and white version of Little Shop of Horrors.
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