Mary Nell McLauchlin:  

At Plant, I thought of myself as an average student but obtained a B.S. in Education from FSU. I decided that “the school system” was not for me during my “practice teaching” trimester when I learned that men were paid more than women because they had to support a family. So, then I became an "airline stewardess" but learned very quickly that the "service industry" was not for me either. What to do now? I had fully expected that I would be married by that time and that all this career stuff was just to fall back on. Then in 1965, I read an article in United Airlines Skyway magazine about their computer operations and one sentence caught my eye about how women programmers were paid equally with men. Right then I decided that I wanted to be a “computer programmer”. Thus began a long process of going from computer operator, to programmer, to project manager, to contract computer consultant to owning my own computer consulting company. In 1990, as my small consulting company struggled, I agreed to go to work for one of my clients as a Systems Manager. I stayed with that company through many iterations and retired from Bank of America in 2005. I never wanted to be a career person but after a couple of tragic heartbreaks, I accepted the fact that I was unlucky in love and made the best of my life. I lived in London from 1970 to 1972 working for Honeywell in their computer division. I learned to snow ski in Austria and spent the winter of 1972 there honing my skills and eventually becoming a ski instructor. I still ski every year although my permanent home is...Expand for more