As I look back at the path my life has taken, it seems clear that there is a pattern of repeated “failing forward”. I would set a goal, fail to achieve it, and then find myself on a new path that was not like the one I had imagined. I seem to be somewhat like the ball in a pinball game. Bouncing around as I am bumped in different directions. The key difference is that I have a general sense of where I want to end up. It is just that the path toward my lifetime goals is not what I had expected.
I had initially set out to be a scientist. I decided that I would study Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Cal-Tech). I needed to pass an entrance exam after studying Physics for a year. I took a year of Physics at our local college “St. Cloud State University” (SCSU). The Physics education I got was not very high level, and I did not do any extra-curricular studies, and I failed the Cal-Tech entrance exam for Physics. I decided to keep attending SCSU and get a Bachelor’s in Physics with a minor in math. I actually got a pretty good education there in the end. I studied electronic engineering and one of my projects involved the Physics of chaotic circuits.
After I graduated, I took stock of what I had learned. I decided that the most important thing I had learned was “learning how to learn.” My second semester, I had taken an introductory psychology class, and the second chapter was about how we learn. I had used that knowledge in the class, which was self paced. We could study at our own pace, take a test on each chapter, and finish whenever we wanted, based on how fast we could learn the material. I went through the chapters quickly and ended up with free time at the end. I used this over and over in my classes and eventually graduated “Magna Cum Laude” with a 3.67 Grade Point Average (G.P.A.).
After a brief stint as a waste water treatment chemist, and a longer period as a video game technician, I decided to start an electronics repair business called “Quality Electronics.” The name came from the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” and the references to “quality” in the book. I stumbled upon some contract work cleaning and testing the 5 1/4 inch floppy drives in the original IBM PCs. These 5 1/4 inch floppy drives could get out of alignment and if they failed, the disks created with these drives would be unreadable by normal floppy drives. The data would be lost. I would clean the drives and run diagnostics to determine whether the drives were within acceptable tolerance levels. From cleaning and testing drives, I expanded my offerings and created a lucrative business. I was soon providing computer hardware maintenance contracts, selling IBM clone computers, and helping set up computer networks for many of the businesses in the St. Cloud Minnesota area.