Some background on my earlier post:

I graduated from BYU in 1995 in music education. That may sound ok to most but the problem was that student teaching pretty much convinced me that high school students are manipulative bastards and killed whatever desire I had to teach. I felt that I leaned more towards performance(trombone).

So I went to graduate school at the University of North Texas. It started out poorly and never got better. My auditions didn't go so well right off and I didn't get placed in the ensemble that I would have liked. Things got better in those regards but I never got into the ensemble that I want. In retrospect, it looked to me like you made a good impression right off or you were screwed. Its a HUGE college of music(biggest in the country last I checked) and once you were pigeonholed, that was it. I take responsibility for some poor decisions that I made while there at school but there was definitely that aspect. My (trombone)teacher & I got along pretty well for the most part and I actually worked for him for a while doing music copying work(I learned Finale while I was at BYU. That really helped me with cash to get through school. He was great in those regards. We had a bit of a falling out towards the end of my time there due to some deception on his part. I graduated with a MM in 1998. But just barely. I was sick of playing the trombone by that time and I was just tired of the whole thing. Surely some of you can relate to that.

Anyhow I decided I wanted to take a break from music and do music copying and some web page construction. Neither of those worked out very well; the copying was inconsistant and I wasn't all that good at the web page thing.

I was basically unemployed for about a year.

Then I met someone who was in my stake(a group of LDS congregations is organized into a stake) that worked for Perot Systems. He was really sold on the company and I was enthusiastic about getting into a technology based corporation. If you think of what the economy was like in 1999 then you might understand. Anywho, I talked myself into a job via a recriuter and they agreed to place me in the mainframe tape library, night shift. At the time all one needed to do , seemingly, was get a foot in the door and work hard and opportunities would present themselves.I did just that and got moved from tape ops to the command center after 7 months. I was moved to various platforms(Data General, Mainframe Operations) before I was moved to my current position: mainframe cycle management. Everything was going well & I seemed to be moving along and then two things happened. The stock market crash in October of 2000 & Ross Perot stopped actively managing the company. Ross Jr was in charge and I don't think that he was much interested in it. Anyhow, the end result was very low annual raises(usually 2% across the board) and limited upward mobility. Everything just froze.

About a year ago I got some hope of moving into the project management field within the company. It was a hot occupation(and probably still is) and the company offered internal classes. Then I went to see him on the morning of January 4, 2005 to ask if I could work on some on some of what whatever projects might be going on to get some experience. He seemed to think that that was a good idea and said he was glad that I told him that I was interested in that field. He would be glad to help. So I left that meeting hopeful, happy, & upbeat. I went back to my regular job and waited. And waited. After several weeks I emailed him a couple of time following up on this and got no response. Then I asked my shift manager(the guy on the same shift as me who also reported to the 'boss' in question. He said that he hadn't heard anything. After a couple more weeks I emailed my boss asking if I could apply for begginer type PM/Coordinator type positions within the company. No response.I asked my shift manager to follow up with him. The message that the boss gave him was 'He can apply but tell him if he does then he's going to be out of a job.' Great. I went to HR to make sure that my job was safe and then I sat down with my shift manager and my boss. Basically nothing got changed except that he said that I could apply for jobs without getting canned in the process. Gee, thanks. Problem is, I have no experience. Hmmmm....seems like we talked about that earlier. I should add that he hasn't let anyone in my shift take another job in the company for at least three years.

So I sit here having worked nights for 6 years, in a job that is killing off my brain cells, with no possibility for advancement, sitting next to a guy for 12 hours at a time who is both immature and has no repect for me(but that's another topic), and I commute 40 minutes a day(each way) to do it all.


But I have 2 music degrees.