Growing up, I was a latchkey kid who barely scraped through high school. College felt like the next step, so I enrolled in community college and earned an associate degree. Honestly, it was all I knew at the time.
Eventually, I started looking at the military. The Coast Guard was my first stop, so I went to a Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) and took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery — better known as the ASVAB. To my surprise, I scored extremely high. The Coast Guard recruiter told me I qualified for any position available. That confused me. How could someone with a mediocre transcript qualify for everything?
Soon, I learned something useful. The ASVAB is the same across all branches. My scores were portable. So, I started shopping them around. First came the Air Force. Then the Army. Finally, the Navy. Each one told me the same thing — I had options.
After doing some research, I discovered the Navy had the strongest technical schools. That sealed the deal. My recruiter tried to steer me into the Nuclear Electronics Technician program. However, given my shaky academic history, I lacked the confidence for that challenge. Instead, I chose the regular Electronics Technician track. It came with a six-year commitment and a financial bonus. Plus, the job prospects afterward looked solid.
Without knowing it, I had just made the most important decision of my life.
Following bootcamp, I entered 17 weeks of ET “A” school. The pace was relentless. Weekly tests kept everyone on edge. Fail a section, and you repeated it. Fail two sections, and you were gone — reassigned to general labor. No second chances.
But something unexpected happened. The material clicked. For the first time, I genuinely enjoyed learning. Rather than just passing, I started excelling. In fact, the instructors noticed. Soon, they asked me to become a peer tutor. Most evenings, I returned to the classroom to help classmates who had struggled on their exams. When I graduated at the top of my class, San Diego Community College officially recognized those efforts.
Next came the second phase: 28 weeks of Advanced Electronics. The courses grew harder. JTIDS. Secure communications systems. Digital cross-connects. Each one built on the last, forming the technical foundation I would carry through my entire career.
All of that happened in 1992. Back then, I never imagined managing $40M+ budgets at Sprint, designing network solutions at Ericsson, or briefing executives at T-Mobile. Yet it all traced back to that moment — a mediocre student who discovered a love for learning, who found his people in the Navy, and who never stopped asking questions.
Sometimes you just have to take the test and see what happens.
This is the first in a series of posts reflecting on a25+ year career in telecommunications, military service, and the journey of reinvention.