Tag: Riverdeep
The path to grad school – part III
by Kenneth on Oct.29, 2008, under The Path
…and now we begin ‘The Kirkwood Years’.
The Kirkwood years started ca 1992 and lasted about one semester, maybe not even that, since I only paid attention until I got my student loan check. Needless to say the partying was not out of my system yet.
Fast forward 11 years and you will find me with my partying days well behind me. I was working at Broderbund, which became The Learning Company, which became Mattel, which again became The Learning Company before finally ending up as Broderbund. I survived 12 rounds of layoffs, and they got me in the 13th. To get rid of me they sold off the entire education division to Riverdeep. I just happened to be working schools/network tech support at that time. The funny things is about 6 weeks after laying me off, Riverdeep bought the remaining pieces of Broderbund. By that time about all that was left was the Printmaster and Printshop programs.
Now I am about 36 years old and unemployed. I had my severance package, 197 hours worth of vacation time that I was paid for and 26 weeks worth of unemployment. Time to figure out what I was going to do. I ended up going back to Kirkwood. This time I ended up with an Associate of Applied Science degree only to find out that this two year degree was not going to get me a job. I ended up spending another year or so taking Computer Science courses with plans of transferring to University of Iowa to finish a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.
My Computer Science instructor was an alum of Mt. Mercy College and she had spoken highly of it several times. There also were conversations with my slightly dubious aquaintance, Bob, which led me to believe that Mt. Mercy would be the place for me to go. I bit hook line and sinker!
Next up, the Mt. Mercy Years….
