Skywatch Friday - Sunset of a Career Pt. I

Sunsets are often the best part of the day.  Not only are they the most colorful part of the day, but they come at a time when many of us are settling into a more relaxed frame of mind, after a busy day at the office.  Life has sunsets as well.  The sunset of my career is close at hand.  I will retire next week, after forty-four years in the construction industry.  I thought I'd take a couple of posts and look back over this journey.  Come along.
I was always interested in drawing as a kid.  My notebooks and binders were filled with doodles, designs, and cartoons.  I took my first drafting class as a sophomore at Edison High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Interestingly enough there were three or four of us that eventually became licensed architects.
After high school I enrolled in the college of Architecture at Oklahoma State University in the fall of 1965.  I struggled with my studies that first year.  While on summer vacation I was drafted into the Army and served in Viet Nam.  I came home in May of 1968 and resumed my studies that fall.
Still struggling with the academic side of the profession, I took my first job in an architects office in 1969 in Springfield, Missouri.  I worked there a couple of years before moving back to Tulsa.  The only problem was, there weren't many jobs for architectural draftsmen at the time, so I found work as a civil engineering draftsman.  I changed jobs and went to work in a firm that had architecture and civil engineering.  I was told that I could work in the civil engineering department and when an opening became available they would give me the opportunity to move into the architecture department.  After a couple of years observing the hiring of several architectural graduates, it became obvious that the only way to make my dream come true was to return to school....to be continued.



Have a blessed week-end.