Bloggin' Umholtz

Would you like to downsize that?

In the spring of 1979 I graduated from Penn State with a degree in Environmental Resource Management. I was not the best of students, but I had an innate intelligence that allowed me to brag I could take a multiple choice test in any subject any pass it. Arrogance? Probably. But more often than not it proved true. This is not a good thing. Study habits? I had none. Attention span? Forget it if I sat anywhere near the window and it wasn't much better if I sat anywhere else. Usually I'd fall asleep because I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning...reading. Reading anything I could get my hands on. More than once I woke up in the library and went straight to class. And so I graduated, not in the top of my class, not even in the middle. But I had a piece of paper that said I was educated and supposedly knew what I was doing. Tell me again what's wrong with the education system?

The point of this is that except for about a month after I graduated I've been working steady ever since...at least until last Friday. I've been downsized and I don't mean I've lost weight. With one days notice, I was "let go". So here I sit 55 years old and unemployed for the first time since 1979. I know I am not alone.


More to follow