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I never went through a retraining program. I got an old fashioned liberal arts BA @ Linfield College, class of 1977. I enlisted in the US Air Force and was trained as a Burroughs mainframe computer operator. I became an operations shift leader, skipped technical school to become an applications programmer, and retired (20 years and 13 days of service) as an IBM mainframe systems programmer just in time for the Y2K panic. I continued to work unhappily in IT, the thrill was gone, through 2007; first as a contractor, then as an insurance company employee, then for the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Then I followed my wife back to Oregon and applied for a job with the VA as a Procurement Technician. I “transferred” (same desk, different job) to become a Contract Specialist in January 2008. I got the transfer because I had that BA and I convinced the boss that I wanted the job. I am now drafting contracts for the DVA for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and occasionally for millions of dollars for construction and remodeling projects. I like my office mates, I feel that I am helping my fellow veterans, life is good. The point is: a retraining program is not the only way to change your job life. If you are willing to restart your salary curve and you can convince an employer that you are willing and able to learn the job and that you really want the job, you just might have a new career. I did it: I’m about to be a GS-11 again and a GS-12 is not out of reach. Good luck to all and to all a good night.

posted 3 years ago
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I am not an invisible man in the Ralph Ellison sense, but I am an invisible man in the culture of the USA.  My father is an almost exclusively main stream white (Anglo) with a very slight admixture of Native American, so slight as to lead to family differences of opinion over which nation was mixed with the European strain (Cree, Creek, Cherokee, etc.).  My mother was a mestiza (mixed native and European) Mexican-American.  My sister looks Anglo (green eyes, fair skin), my brother looks stereotypically Mexican (but speaks no Spanish) and I am a Mexican-American that can pass for Anglo or Italian or Jewish, etc., and I have a BA in Spanish.

I look like the societal norm, i.e., European, but am not entirely.  I understand the conversations around me in Spanish but hesitate to assist those in need because I do not wish to offend them by imposing my assistance because I look so Anglo.  When I do assist I never know if it is resented because fellow Hispanics are too polite to let me know that they resent my assistance.

Here I am, equipped and able to help but hobbled because I look like just another white guy helping the “disadvantaged”.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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