[Courses] [Careers] Michelle Murrain: Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes...

[Katja]

Apologies for not looking after my course subscription, so this is a 
rather belated after-thought to Michelle's journey (that's also why I 
copy the entire original message):

having spent most of my academic education as a theologian, I moved on 
to ethical retailing, which moved me on to studying political economy, 
which moved me on to feminism and women's adult education in IT, when I 
became interested in free software.

see the link? it makes sense to me as different manifestations of an 
ethical take on life, whether it's fairtrade coffee or linux. of course 
I am not saying that only Christians are ethical people, not at all. 
this is just how it came about for me. I regret that I am still only a 
software user, though.

I recently found out that one of the main Protestant churches in Germany 
has a special internal Linux user group. :-)

Katja

Mary wrote:

>A careers lesson from Michelle Murrain:
>
>My career has been a strange one, in some ways, although it's pretty
>internally consistent if you know me. 
>
>I went to college in 1977, a pretty immature, pretty religious 18 year
>old, with an interest in science, and parents who wanted me to become a
>doctor. My first year in college, I got involved in a crowd of folks who
>were hanging out and programming on a PDP 11/34. We played lots of
>games, developed programs to do stuff like create different kinds of
>ascii drawings, analyze statistical data, and that sort of thing. Where
>I went to school was a small liberal arts college that had no CS person
>or department - so it was all informal and ad-hoc. By my sophmore year,
>I was teaching computer programming, and working on programming an Apple
>II, creating wierd and interesting things upon request of artists and
>the like (the school I went to had a serious arts focus). I also studied
>science, and worked in a hospital - doing a combination of programming
>of a data analysis system (in c), as well as doing some scientific
>research together. But working in a hospital cured me permanently of the
>idea of becoming a doctor.
>
>When I was in my senior year in college, I was either going to grad
>school (in biology) or go into software development. In retrospect, I
>might have been happier going into development, but I don't regret going
>into the biology field. Parental pressure certainly contributed to the
>decision to go to grad school.
>
>I spent 6 years in grad school, from 1981-1987, and ended up with a
>Ph.D. in Neuroscience. A big chunk of my dissertation was creating a
>software package to do 3-Dimensional reconstruction of specific
>anatomical features of simple nervous systems, so I basically was
>programming throughout my Ph.D. I started out in college with Basic, did
>some 8080 assembly language. In grad school, I used basic of various
>sorts (the basic on Digital PDP 11's, as well as early MS-Basic. I also
>learned pascal then, which was my language of choice for about 5 years.)
>
>After my Ph.D., I did a post-doctoral fellowship, which was mostly
>focused on experimental work, although I did do a bit of work on a
>system for capturing images of neurons (brain cells) using florescent
>dyes (mostly doing customization and tweaking, I wasn't the developer.)
>
>When I got a job at a small liberal arts college in 1989, teaching
>biology, I took a break from programming, working primarily on research
>in both neuroscience in public health. It was here I began getting
>seriously into the net, starting and maintaining some email lists first,
>co-moderating a usenet newsgroup, then launching into gopher early, then
>into the web. It was the web, and the desire to do web applications that
>got me back into programming, around 1994. I learned Perl then and
>later, what was at the time, called php/fi.  I also learned msql
>(mini-sql - died a quiet death a while ago) postgresql, and mysql. (I
>remain, to this day, dedicated to postgresql).
>
>During my years teaching, I'd also worked a fair bit with non-profit
>organizations on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, which I'd gotten involved
>with as a volunteer in grad school. I was regularly asked to help with
>technology issues that these nonprofits needed - they were woefully
>under resourced in terms of hardware and software, and really didn't
>know how to effectively use technology. In addition, I was working with
>schools on the same issues. That got me very interested in helping
>nonprofits with technology issues, and it lead me to start a small
>consulting firm in 1997 that was focused on helping nonprofits primarily
>with web technologies.
>
>In 1999, I left academia to focus full time on the work with nonprofits.
>As I worked with nonprofits, primarily in helping them with databases
>and web technologies, but also pretty generally, I realized that they
>were in very difficult positions in terms of software. They couldn't
>afford proprietary packages. Fundraising packages were (and still are)
>exhorbitantly expensive, niche software (like client management) is hard
>to find, can be expensive, and often locks organizations in. This, my
>general geekiness, and my general anarchic tendencies, got me to be very
>interested in Linux and open source software in 1999.  I saw this as a
>very important tool that nonprofits could use.
>
>I've been very involved in the nonprofit open-source 'movement' over the
>past few years. I was on the steering committee of the organization
>called 'NOSI' - Non Profit Open Source Initiative (http://nosi.net). I'm
>also now on the board of an organization called Aspiration
>(http://www.aspirationtech.org) - although agnostic on the
>OS/Proprietary thing, it's focus is working to get more and better
>software to the nonprofit sector.
>
>I  have worked with a wide variety of nonprofit organizations and
>schools over the years. I was an independent consultant mostly, which
>had it's ups and downs. In 2003, I joined a small consulting firm (with
>8 people). This has been really positive. 
>
>There is more to this story, which is where the subject line comes from.
>After doing technology consulting for 8 years, I've decided to do
>another change in career, in a completely different direction. At the
>same time as I was doing all of the research, programming, etc. I was on
>a meandering spiritual path, from being a religious fundamentalist, to a
>secular humanist, through paganism, settling in as a Buddhist and
>Unitarian Universalist. This path has, now, lead me to decide to enter
>the ministry. I'm going back to school in the fall to get my Masters in
>Divinity. It's way different, but it's also pretty consistent with who I
>am. I've always been committed to a life of service, and I'm deciding to
>be engaged in that in much more direct ways than I have been before.
>I'll always be a geek, but I'm ready for a life with more human
>interaction, more hands-on experience, and focus on the spiritual.
>
>I'd say the major lesson I've learned so far is that it's worth taking
>risks to do what you want to do, what you enjoy. I was told I was nuts
>to leave a tenured acadmic position - and it's true that I had less
>stability and security afterward, but I've enjoyed what I've been doing.
>And now, although most folks who know me are not surprised, this new
>change is causing a bit of head-scratching. But I'm following my heart,
>answering a call. There's a great quote I like: "A vocation is where the
>worlds great hunger and your good gladness meet." I have been incredibly
>lucky in my life to have been able to live out that saying, especially
>now.
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