“Necessity is the mother of invention. A need or problem encourages creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem. This saying appears in the dialogue Republic , by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.” How true ?
I started my professional career with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from one of the top and male dominated university in New York and probably country. I wasn’t an “A” student, but my strength was in math and computers. I bartended to pay for college (first problem solved) and supplemented my cash flow by tutoring all those male students (second problem solved).
After graduating, I was hired by a Fortune 500 company that was a leading 20th century U.S. producer of military and civilian aircraft. On my first day my boss gave all the new hires a math problem to solve. I thought that was a warm up exercise and solved it in 20 minutes to a shock of my boss. Needless to say, the company engineers were predominately male and here was a 20 year old who solved a problem that they were working on for years…. So I had to explain my solution to my boss and his boss and his boss…. The top boss said to me “Well done, but now prove it works!”. So after writting the code (then it was Fortran and computer resided in its own trailor) , collecting raw data and numerous tests, it actually worked! Next step was a report and patent. It was very exciting and fulfilling, but life is about much more than a succesful career.
I got married, had a family, worked for a while and at that time raising a family was more improtant and a necessity for me. So I became a stay at home mom, kept all my kids busy with sports, dance classes and plays. It was so much fun for a while, but I needed something more… My brain was lacking “exercise”.
So I reinvented myself into a realtor. Real estate is a cut throat business around here and I did not enjoy that. So going back to engineering was a plan, but it was short lived. I had a succesful interview with another millitary company. My interviewer remembered me for college! I had an offer contingent on a contract that the company was bidding on (which feel through).
My oldest son got intro trouble in High School for creating My Space page for a teacher and I was called in to the principals’ office the day of the interview. The principal (man of course) was stating his case against my son when I demanded proof that it wasn’t my computers’ IP address. He was so shocked that a woman knew what she was talking about. So I gave him a copy of my resume (since I had a bunch for the interview) and afterwards walked out of his office with a job teaching math and computers (another invention).
I have been teaching for a while and life was good, but then my family and I suffered a tragic loss. I became the head of the household and teaching sadly doesn’t pay the bills. So necessity again is to reinvent myself….
So now you are up to date. I got into Flatiron School on a Woman Coders scholarship and reinventing myself into a modern coder!