Plastics

Those younger than retirement age might not remember the movie "The Graduate." It was not all Simon & Garfunkel and Anne Bancroft getting funky on Dustin Hoffman. Ture, we did all think that all those blank stares from Dustin Hoffman were acting - not a feature. But that isn't the point of this post.

What was the point? Oh yeah, "The Graduate". In the movie, Hoffman has just returned home for his graduation party from college. But poor Hoffman did not know what he was going to do next. He was perplexed. The guests at this party, a parade of his parents' friends, had some ideas including the iconic moment when one guests says, "One word. Plastics."

Note that this was a seminal moment when an entire generation learned that

1. A college education is really for jobs - as opposed to knowledge for knowledge's sake
2. Your parent's friends are swingers
3. (For Girls) "You guys never did get me"
4. (For Boys) "Mom's friends are hot now?"

My point here is that there were a couple of moments like that for me in my winding path to project management, and I enjoyed working and teaching it.

• On a city bus on the way to elementary school, I was told, "You are a smart little boy. You should become a lawyer."
• On a city bus on my way to UCLA, "Law. That's where the money is."
• Working at Mannat, Phelps, Rothenburg, and Tunney, a law firm in Century City. At the end of the summer, a female lawyer said to me, "Don't become a lawyer. You're smart enough, but you have to really want to be one enough to get through law school. And you don't."

And finally, my best friend Steve, who said, "Hey, want a job?" And computers it was.

And, no. there was no point to this story.