The early years
My elementary school was Our Lady of Sorrows, which is a small Roman Catholic school located in Garfield, New Jersey. While I have remembered each one of the people in this photograph, I have maintained contact with only two or three of them. I attended OLS from kindergarten thru 8th grade, which would be September of 1967 to June of 1975.
My teacher in the 7th grade was Mrs. Scott, she mostly taught English (one of my least favorite subjects), but I really liked being ion her classroom. She often told stories about her husband, who was an airline pilot.
If you click on the picture, a full size version will open in a separate page. Can you guess which of these young students is me? I will give you a hint, I was much younger, and my hair was a different color back then.
High School
My high school was Pope Pius XII, which was located in Passaic, New Jersey. The 'Pope' closed down as a high school, sometime around 1984, and the buildings are now part of the Passaic public school system.
Pope Pius was located a few blocks away from the famous Capitol Theater. You can see a list of the concerts that happened during the time I was in school there (1975-1979) here, which is a page located deep within a site dedicated to Rock Concerts in New Jersey. I remember sneaking out of school quite often at lunch in order to run over to the ticket office and puurchase tickets for concerts that were very suddenly announced.
Even though it has been well over 30 years since I went to school there, I still remain in regular contact with several of my old teachers. This seems to have been a common occurance among students who went to Pope Pius, several of the teachers I had while there, kept up a regular correspondence wtih the teachers that they had ath the Pope, while they were students there themselves. Over time, the methods of contact have changed, from the US postal service, to email. Now most of us keep up with one another through social media sites like Facebook.
College
- University of Hartford
- William Paterson College
- Northeastern University
- Rutgers University - School of Arts & Sciences
- Rutgers University - School of Communication & Information
University of Hartford
1979-1981
I started college in the School of Engineering at University of Hartford, located in West Hartford, Connecticut. Originally I intended on studying electrical engineering, but after my first semester, I switched to the applied engineering program at the Ward College of Technology, and concentrated mainly on communications engineering, although in my final semester I became mainly interested in software and computer programming. I left due to financial concerns in December of 1981, and intended on returning, but never did. The School of Engineering and Ward College of Technology eventually merged and became The College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture around 2000.
Unlike highschool, I did not keep in touch with any of the teachers that I had while there, until very recently. My reintroduction with one of my former calculus and electronics teachers happened accidentally a short while ago. I am a licensed extra class amateur radio operator (callsign AB2RC), and a few months ago, I was involved in a random on-air conversation, with another ham in Connecticut. A typical ham radio conversation, or "QSO" in ham-speak, consists of exchanging some basic information, such as name, location, occupation, local weather, and some details about your station. The other fellow mantioned that his name was Walt, and that he was a recently retired college professor. When I entered his callsign into my logging software (which retrieves additional information like full name and address from a database), I realized that I knew who he was. When I asked him how long he was at the University of Hartford, he was a bit confused, as he never mentioned exactly what college he had retired from.
I told him that I had just logged the QSO, and that when I saw his name, I realized that I was one of his students. Walt was logging using paper and pen, and did not have immediate access to my information. When I told him what my last name was, he recognized it - which was surprising because I was definately NOT one of his better students (maybe that is WHY he recognized me). Anyway, through the magic of radio, what might have been a short conversation ended up being a quite a long and memorable one.
William Paterson College
1982-1986
After leaving The University of Hartford, I started going to William Paterson University, it was still known as William Paterson College in those days. My primary major was computer science, with a concentration in mathematics and science.
I ended up switching concentrations from mathematics to business applications, finally changing majors to history and business administration. I was attending school part time, while working full time, and usually taking courses at night.
I never intended to graduate from WPC, and was mainly taking classes in order to learn enough to get a better position at whatever company I was working for at the time (using whatever educational benefits that were offered by my employers).
Northeastern University
1989-1991
In 1988, I found myself married, and living in Boston. While living there I was still following my approach of attending school mostly to better my employment opportunities. Unfortunately, I needed to pay for school out of my own pocket at the time, as I was self employed at the time.
One of the first courses that I took there was an introduction to C programming. I eventually used what I learned in that class to create a system for processing insurance ID cards while I was working at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Rutgers University - SAS
2007-2014
In August of 2003, I started working as an Application Developer at ESS Division here at Rutgers University.
I originally wanted to start going back to school right away, but due to the birth of a third child, and I needed to delay that plan for a few years. I applied to the School of Arts & Sciences in the Summer of 2007, and finally graduated with a degree in Information Technology & Informatics in May of 2014.
Rutgers University - SCI
2014-present
In my final year as an undergrad at Rutgers, I decided to apply to the MLIS program at the School of Communication & Information and will be completing the degree program in 2017.
