On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 10:03:57 -0700, Califbill billnews wrote:
Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 10/14/2015 1:12 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 10:48:45 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
Turns out I would have followed the same career path and would have been
able to accomplish whatever I have in my accomplishment bucket without
the degree. It certainly helped. But, (and you may find this impossible
to understand or believe), the Navy electronic and electrical schools
covered the same technical material in a much more comprehensive way
when compared to the civilian colleges and universities where I also
took courses.
That was my experience. I took basic electricity 101 and basic
electronics 101. (Essentially DC circuits and AC circuits
respectively)
All it really did for me was allow me to get 104 out of 108 on the
ETST and allowed me to go to FT school
Once I got there, I had pretty much wrapped up everything I learned in
"college " in a couple of weeks, my coasting was over and I had to
"turn to".
As I recall, "BE&E" school was a prerequisite course for several Navy
ratings including ET's, RM's, GM's, FT's and others. I was originally
designated to become a RM (Radioman). I had attended college for a
while before entering the Navy (in a liberal arts program) and I
remember that I struggled a bit with some of the math in BE&E school.
Math had never been a strong subject for me, even in high school.
Fortunately, a classmate had recently graduated from college with a math
degree before he joined the Navy and he tutored me a bit to help me with
the math.
Later, I converted to ET and was designated as a ETN ... meaning I
was to specialize in communications electronics. Another branch of ET
school was for ETR's who specialized in radar electronics. These
schools were much longer ... and whoever graduated first in class in
his/her respective rating (ETN or ETR) was allowed to go through the
other branch of ET school as well. Somehow I managed to graduate first
in class in the ETN branch and was allowed to then go through the ETR
course as well. Many of the course segments were the same for both, so
it didn't take as long to finish the ETR branch. The result was that
with additional duties at the school, I spent 2 years at Great Lakes,
just attending (and then teaching) electronics courses.
Teaching is a great way to learn, BTW.
I was sent a draft notice while in NCR 315 Computer school. 36 weeks on
the whole system. 40 hour weeks. That is equivalent to maybe 80 semester
units. I joined the SF reserve and was sent to a 36 week school for ground
nav aids. ils, tacan, loran, etc. since I already had a background in
electronics, the AF allowed 4 of us to challenge the classes. A week later
we had cut 10 weeks off the course. 1/2 the course was basic electronics,
and 1/2 was on the equipment. Could not skip on the equipment side. Ended
up fixing radar units on transports during my reserve duty. I learned a
lot more electronics in NCR school than in my degree courses. As Greg
says, we got lots of training from our employers.
My best education was after the machines got to the point that they
didn't break and pretty mich fixed themselves when they did. We were
moving to "services". I did a contract class that was a pretty good
primer into contract law. We had a great class about telling the phone
company that they had to do their job. No more of an installer
repairman responding to a data call, pulling out his butt set and
saying "Bob how does the line sound on your end". We had better test
equipment than they did. That also covered the various transmission
protocols and what actually happened on the line side of the modem.
It actually made the phone company get better. That morphed into
"connectivity" the school I went to that got me BICSI certified (data
cabling)
Then I went in an entirely different direction with Installation
Planning, the design of computer rooms (Electrical HVAC and physical
layout). There was a lot more attached to that but the biggest one
here was lightning protection.
That ended up being mostly self taught since we were on the leading
edge of that science/art. Practice did not actually have much to do
with the theory the engineers were bringing to the table. The UCF
knew everything there was to know about attracting lightning and what
was going on in a strike but they didn't understand much about
preventing damage to the equipment.
I spent a lot of time with the guys at State Farm in Winter Haven and
they were actually working on this from the equipment side. We
expanded their findings in Ft Myers and made our lightning calls drop
to just about zero.