web hosting short URLs photo sharing

Personal Information

Here are the basics: I'm about 40 years old, white, female. I'm also permanently partnered.

I was born in Atlanta while my father was in the Master's program at Georgia Tech. He quit school shortly thereafter to take a job with Union Carbide in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That's where my family still lives and where I grew up.

I spent 13 years in south Georgia, although I grew up in East Tennessee. After graduation from Oak Ridge High, I attended Roane State Community College, where I was on the school's winningest debate team and served as editor of the school newspaper. My performance on the debate team won me a scholarship to Middle Tennessee State University. I attended there for a year, but had no sense of "what I wanted to do with my life", so after that year, I transferred to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. That was closer to home (I commuted) but I was getting more & more depressed. I finally dropped out.

I knew I had to make a living somehow, so I entered the Electronics program at the State Area Vocational-Technical School in Harriman, Tennessee (less than 30 miles from Oak Ridge). After completing the program, I was an Electronics Technician. The next step was sending out letters of application.

A spark of interest came in the form of a phone call from NCR Corp.'s WorldWide Service Parts Center. They wanted to know would I fly down to Peachtree City, Georgia (just down I-85 from Atlanta) for an interview. I went, thinking I was interviewing for a job fixing PC boards. Instead, they offered me a position as a Test Equipment Programmer, programming the equipment used to test PC boards. I took it, and thus came my move to Georgia.

I started at NCR-WSPC right after Christmas 1983. Within a few years I had advanced as far as I could as a programmer, so I took the writing test required to apply for a technical writing position and passed it. Shortly thereafter I became what NCR referred to as a "Publications Specialist".

I stayed at NCR-WSPC and steadily advanced as a Publications Specialist (with a brief break to try my hand at a magazine start-up that didn't work out) until I could advance no more without trying for managerial positions that weren't opening up anytime in the near future. So I began applying other places, and in 1989 went to work for Shoap Technical Services in Atlanta, Georgia.

STS was a small firm that did work for firms that went outside for writing skills. A significant portion of the work came from National Data Corporation (NDC), a well-known credit-card transaction processor.

By the Fall of 1992, even small companies like STS were feeling the results of the economic downturn, and I was laid off. Shortly after that I became ill with what is now thought to be viral encephalitis. I've spent years in rehabilitation of one kind or another.

The Georgia Department of Rehabilitation Services sponsored my re-entry to the world of academia, on the theory that employment would be easier to find with a degree. I graduated with a BBA in Computer Information Systems 6/8/96 and moved back to Oak Ridge soon after.

After looking unsuccessfully for a job for 18 months, I completed certification as a Web Publisher. I moved to Meridian, Mississippi to act as Administrative Director for Pets and People: Companions in Therapy & Service (now moving to Alabama) and finished graduate school (for my MSBA) at Mississippi State in Spring 2000. I am working for the computer center at the University of South Alabama as of the end of November, 2000.

More information on my interests outside of school is available here, or you can write me!
(No solicitations, please.)

My Experience with Encephalitis

Back to my homepage

Citronelle, AL

---

Page Design