Where NSC Led Me

My NSC days was some of the best years that I can remember. It was during this time that I got married and started a family with a fellow EMT who later turned out to become my ex-GF. This was a time of so many things learned and experienced at work. The EMT experience allowed me to learn things that were not taught in school and even after the two-year EMT program things like Kepner Tregoe, 7 Habits, IT training, etc. gave me most of the tools I need at work after I left in 1997.
The reason I am now working in Michigan was because of my IT training and experience at NSC. There were a few important things that got me from working as a mechanical engineer and into computers.

1. Being part of the User Analysts program of ISD where I got formal training in program logic formulation and COBOL (yes, that's how old I am). It was free training but held only after office hours by Computrade instructors. I had to spare a few hours each night going through the training and this was also when my first child was born. Who can forget the anxiety felt when your first child is born and I had to agonize over being home soonest or preparing for the future.
2. I had to cajole and beg and ask friends like the late Vince Guanzon, Bobby Gopo, Eli Lopez and the rest of the computer guys at the 5-S TCM project team to understand how computers worked as well as the parts involved. I mostly borrowed time on their PC which was considered high-tech then. I was a complete newbie but was so into learning it because I believed computers were the future.
3. My stint at CORPLAN and eventually the spin-off MACSD allowed me to get formal training and get experience developing manufacturing IT systems.

This know-how allowed me to ride the IT boom in the US and be hired by an agency and deployed in Detroit in one of the Big 3. In a curious twist of fate, I am now working as an engineer again but somehow the skills I have learned since my NSC days are still being put to good use. I can definitely say and many here will agree that NSC developed its people to have confidence and equipped us with skills that allowed us to be gainfully employed even after NSC was gone. In some ways NSC felt like home. Sadly it is a home that we can only reminisce and talk about the happy memories that were formed there.

Bong S.