Here’s Shimelle’s prompt from Wednesday: If there was just one thing
from your youth that you could pass on to today’s younger generation
what would it be? Something as simple as the original Sesame Street
theme song or something more complex, like growing up more
slowly?


For some odd reason, the very first thing that came to my mind was Cat’s
Cradle.

My sister and I played this game for hours when we were kids and I loved
it so much. Thinking of it makes me think of being a kid. In that
non-electronic, non-email way. Like jumping rope which I also loved.

Today’s prompt from Shimelle is: Write about your first job and ask
your blog readers to share their first job stories too.

Another interesting one for me. In Turkey, it’s not common for teenagers
to work like it is in the US. So I never had a real paying job until I
moved to the US. It all depends what first job means to you. The first
time I got paid for doing something was proofreading for the college
newspaper. The first “corporate” job I had was for Bell Laboratories my
Junior year in college. I was a programmer. And the first
“real/fulltime” job I had was as a programmer at Goldman Sachs. Most of
my career has been about programming or managing people who are. Now I
manage products and not people, but it’s still about the code I suppose.
I had a brief period where I taught 5th grade which was the most
interesting and the most dreadful year of my life.

So I guess, career-wise, my life hasn’t been incredibly interesting. But
it’s also not horribly boring. Something in between. I’ve almost always
been lucky enough to work for reputable companies and with intelligent
people. I can’t ask for more.

Well I can. But not yet.