If you could start again, what would you major in?

Well, it was a cool job, but it was also a shitload of work. There are a lot of people out there who think that we got paid to go to games and that it's the greatest job in the world. Don't get me wrong, it's a hell of a lot better than having to work construction or something like that, but I think the perception about working in sports being fun does us no favors where we're changing careers.

 

You dig Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel, huh? One of my favorite shows. They make a lot of money, but man that's back-breaking work.

 

Medical, biology, journalism

 

I'm talking more about fun in the sense of "What will happen today?" Yes, a lot of sports is scheduled entertainment and if you don't want to work weird, often shitty hours, get out now. Even the scheduled entertainment can be quite amazing - such as Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig's Iron Man streak. Our sports editor said, "well what is going to happen, all he is going to do is take his at-bat and maybe get to first base."

One day I'm remembering in particular was when I was got assigned to cover a pilot who was making a cross-country journey. "Why is this sports?" I asked, but the managing editor said I was the one to do it.

Well, turns out the pilot was a quadriplegic and I had to meet him at our small town airport and take him to his hotel about 20 minutes away. By the time we got halfway to the hotel, he had told me about the bomb that rendered him without legs and how he later lost his arms. How he used three navigation techniques and how he was worried mostly about mountains and power poles and tried not to fly at night. I had enough for a 20-inch story in just that drive to the hotel.

I helped him do his laundry at the hotel and after interviewing him and shooting the shit with him for three hours, I left having made a new friend.

I try to think of that day when I wonder why the fuck I got in this business. "What will happen today?"

 

Thanks to Nancy Pelosi I would become a philosophy major.

 

For me reporting was the best job in the world...10% of the time.

Wasn't enough to make up for the other 90%, but I do miss the days when it was very, very good.

I still wish I'd studied something either more practical or more academically interesting. In journalism it mattered less what degree I had than that I had a degree at all, and it might've given me more opinions when I was jumping the newspaper barge.

 

A few years ago, the cutoff age was 43 for the Army. I know, because I looked into it when I was unemployed in Florida. Shit, back then they were taking any swinging dick who didn't have a murder conviction.

Anyway, my job now makes me wish I'd joined the Marines right out of high school, but there was no way in hell I was cut out for military discipline at that time. A smartass who knew it all, I'd have been PT'd to death.

 

I would have probably skipped college and got experience with heavy machinery and welding at a younger age or still do college but go the route of marketing with graphic design/video/photo on the side.

As for the ski bum comment - wherever that was - I'm still doing it and loving every moment of it. My parents are happy for me, friends back home jealous, and I live where people vacation. This fun and games lifestyle has eventually landed me a job with the number one ski resort destination (by the numbers) in the marketing department. So, it's not all bad.

 

I think about this every time I have to take my car in to be worked on. The guy who runs the shop is just a really good, down-to-earth guy. Does really nice work, and practical work. (On our older car a couple of years ago for the inspection, he asked, "Do I just need to get it to pass and keep you safe, or do you want me to do everything?") Anyway, here's a guy who's been running his own shop for decades, has a great family and has to be making money hand over fist.

Then I think back to high school (early 90s) and the stigma the kids who were taking all the vocational classes were stuck with. There really was a divide in the perception of the academia/AP/college prep bullshit and the vocational stuff, even by the administration, and it still pisses me off to this day. Unfortunately, I wasn't confident enough to do anything about it at the time other than just be nice to people, but I wish I had been required to take some of those courses. Maybe I would've fallen in love with cars and how they work, and I could've been this guy I know.

I look at the high schools where I used to cover sports, and I hear of these stupid things like some overweighted senior project that the kid who can take apart a motorcycle and build it back blindfolded is always going to struggle with, yet he gets no accolades for what he can do well. Unless, I guess, he gets those accolades later in life when the guy with the journalism degree has to hand over his credit card twice a year.

 

Would have done law school or business. Still batting either of those around.

 

Hire me?

I could handle the downhill mountain biking marketing.

 

I worked a summer in a salmon cannery in a remote location in Alaska. That was backbreaking work as well.