You won't find how I got into computers from my resume, so I'll tell you.  First I'll declare that I consider myself very lucky.  I was attending University of Pittsburgh (a little too young and immature 'cause I went there without my senior year in high school, but that's another story).  Anyway, I had one more class to fill my schedule, and I didn't know what to take.  So, I was in the book store and saw a pile of books with the title "The MAD Primer."  Now, back in those days I was an avid Mad Magazine reader.  I read each issue cover-to-cover.  So I figured any course with Mad Magazine would be great.  Well, I soon found out that MAD stood for Michigan Algorithmic Decoder, a computer language, like COBOL or BASIC.  I took that course and fell in love with computers, punched cards and all.

That summer, I got a job in the mail room of International Paper Company in New York City.  All day I sorted mail, delivered mail and did paper shuffling like making booklets for the "suits" upstairs.  One day I was assigned the task of three-hole-punching this cart full of paper using this huge drill that drilled the holes through a stack of paper 2 feet high.  So I drilled and I drilled.  When I wheeled the cart to my boss, he turned purple.  Half of the printed sheets were three hole punched down the right hand side! So he fired me.  My paperwork went to the Human Relations department, where some big-wig was reviewing the week's firings.  He must have said something like this to himself,  "This college gal knows about computers (remember this was unique in 1966) so she must be pretty smart and gotten bored, that why she made a mess of hundreds of dollars worth of paper.  Let's get her back and put her into the computer department."  And that was really the beginning.  I worked as the assistant to a senior programmer/analyst, Chuck Wheeler.  This wonderful man treated me like a master training his apprentice, each time giving me a task slightly more difficult than the one before, slightly more difficult than I thought I could handle.  I learned more that summer than you can imagine.  And now I try to teach the same way.

Well, I took a few more courses in computers at University of Pittsburgh, but I dropped out at the end of my sophomore year.  Cool it, we'll get to my degrees later, you don't have a high school and college drop-out teaching you!   I found a computer job in New York City.  Since I was a big-mouth kid, they kept trying to set me up by assigning me jobs they thought was too difficult for me.  Stretching taught me more and more about computers.

I got married and moved to Boston.  My husband Howard had lots of degrees, and I had none.  I'm a fiercely competitive person, so I set to work.  I went to Boston University at night. So I understand what it is to go to school while holding down a full time job.   I majored in computers since that was now the field in which I was employed.  We moved to New Jersey a few years later, and I was three courses short of my degree.  Boston University has my lifelong gratitude for letting me take those last 3 courses at Rutgers and awarding me a BU diploma.  

Well, I got so used to going to school a couple of nights a week, I just kept going.  I earned my MBA at Farleigh Dickinson University.  I complained so much about the fellow who taught the Management Information Systems course , that as the dean was handing me my diploma, he said "I expect you'll be in my office next week to interview for the instructor slot we have teaching MIS!" 

So I taught MIS for a few years in the Graduate School of Business at FDU, which was across the street from Exxon, where I worked.  I had several computer positions there, but the most memorable, looking back 19 years later, was as a Database Specialist.  I wrote a Relational Database System called STAR. To learn about Relational Databases, which back then were in their infancy, I met some big names like Moshe Zloof, who invented QBE, the basis for Paradox and Access.  I went drinking with Chris Date, considered the database guru (his texts have been around for 25 years.)

Then another lucky thing happened.  I had my son Adam, who now finishing his master's degree in Computers Information Systems (gee the acorn doesn't fall far from the ....)  at Carnegie Mellon University, the top computer school in the world.  For a few months, I tried being a full-time mother.   Then I thought about what about my previous jobs had I liked best?  It was teaching one night a week at FDU.  So I got this job at Union County College.  That was 20 years ago.  And here I am.

Oh yes, in 1991 I gave another stab at motherhood.  Noah, started using computers when he was two. He learned, as most young children do, mostly by trying things himself.

Now, I've told you this was more than you would ever want to know about an ol' Prof.  I hope is was a fun read.  I hope you will have a fun time taking my courses.  I hope you will be as lucky in life as I have been.