Well heck, since they posted my photo and all...after OHS I attended St. Martin's College for a year, then enlisted in the USN where I spent four years as a Navy journalist and managed to roam the planet from Iceland to Thailand and many parts in between...I spent three years overseas. The Navy seemed to like having me and I was promoted to E-5 in two years, more typically a lifer's rank. I spent a year in Iceland editing the NATO base newspaper and doing TV news, then served as leading petty officer of the public affairs office on an aircraft carrier deployed in the Western Pacific...I gained a ton of experience and responsibility by the time I was 23 and wouldn't trade it for anything, though I greatly disliked the military lifestyle (little things like 20-ton bomb-laden airplanes landing on the roof at 3 a.m., and being jammed together with 5,000 other smelly crewmen amidst very noisy machinery). Then came Seattle Central Community College for a paramedic program I failed to complete, then Evergreen where they rudely forced me to graduate at age 27 after accumulating 5 1/2 years of undergraduate credits in subjects ranging from medieval literature to biochemistry. I never settled on a primary area of study and Evergreen doesn't require that you do, so I happily generalized and milked my G.I. Bill benefits to the last penny. I became an educated bum. I studied journalism further there and had already been well-trained in that area courtesy of our Department of Defense. Next I spent 12 years as the public information officer/community relations manager at Providence St. Peter Hospital. It was a good fit with my background in journalism, public affairs and health sciences--I was surprised at 28 to discover I had somehow acquired marketable skills. Much of my job was promoting public awareness of the charitable missions of the Sisters of Providence, as well as explaining medical technology to the public. It was interesting and often personally rewarding...not financially rewarding when compared with corporate or agency PR, but those jobs were never on my radar. While I was a professional propagandist I preferred to apply myself to worthwhile causes and sometimes succeeded...some regard public relations as journalism's evil twin but that ain't always true. I occasionally served as a flack and did damage control when required but in both military and civilian roles my main task was to inform and educate internal and external audiences. After the hospital job got downsized I've variously been a public information officer with the WA Dept of Agriculture, a photographer (black-and-white, film only, people as subjects), a computer repairman (steady work there), an apprentice marine electrician in Westport, a builder of vacuum tube stereo amplifiers (a profitable gig) and an antique gunsmith/restorer (my specialties were 1896 Swedish rifles you need a Gurkha to carry, plus old cowboy revolvers that weigh 4-5 pounds...I enjoyed fixing them up and getting outside to punch holes in paper targets. If that makes me a gun nut, I'm guilty). That covers my education and employment in tedious detail. The cool thing to me was that I managed to turn several longtime hobbies and interests into paid occupations for a time. I've never had a family to support so I had the freedom to be rather irresponsible in some people's eyes (at times very irresponsible in most people's eyes...I've managed to lose much of what I once had). My latest dog Milo and I now live in a downtown Olympia apartment where SeaMart used to be, next to the Farmers Market. My personal passions haven't changed much--I'm into books, music, audio electronics and animal advocacy. I still write, now for my own amusement, and have volunteered my PR skill set with half a dozen non-profits over the years. That summarizes my past half century in one tortured paragraph...it covers the school and work parts anyway, which say next to nothing about who you are or what you've "accomplished." Individual achievement is much over-valued in any case, all that matters to me are health, contentment, kindness, tolerance and enough varied interests to ensure your mind doesn't petrify. With those things plus a good dog or two (or cat, goat, parrot, iguana, whichever beast floats your boat), to me you are a successful human being and worthy citizen of the world. I've said way more than enough and am now rambling, sorry. I used to preach that the ABC's of good writing were Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity; today the most I've managed is accuracy. This is much more than I've ever said about myself to anyone and I'm thoroughly bored by people who make themselves the topic of conversation but that's what this space is for, I guess: David Coble, This is Your Life. It hasn't been glorious, I've never been well-off and I've had many rough spots, major catastrophes and lean times but somehow it's stayed fairly interesting (to me at least).