NAP DigitAlums

As a Pomona College alum several time zones but less than a decade removed, I often find myself explaining where I went to school. Usually, I start off by saying it's ``a small liberal arts school,'' and then comparing it to a local institution of similar background, currently Carleton College in Minnesota. Eventually, it degenerates into an explanation of a liberal arts education, where they ``don't teach you anything that you can actually make any real money from,'' at least not in any direct manner. At that point the other person nods knowingly and mutters something about how that explains why I am in journalism.

Explaining how so many alums, and Nappies at that, got into the computer industry perhaps is more difficult. The Nu Alpha Phi I remember wasn't exactly heavy on the natural sciences, and the only course from Harvey Mudd College I ever took was English. Yet, here we are, program analysts, software designers, hardware product managers, computer consultants, Webmasters and mistresses and, for those of us who can't really do any of it, reporters writing about technology. The Pomona College alumni office sent a list of 26 Nappies who had told them they were in the computer industry, a clearly incomplete tally given the number of Nappies in the biz that I know personally who were not listed.

Sixteen of the 26 were from West Coast states, and 15 of those in California. Thomas Winchester `43 #250 was the earliest alum listed in the business, while three graduated in the 1950s.

Here are four of their stories.

Nancy was the perfect liberal arts student.

``I was just horrible at everything,'' said Johnson, who went through the usual bouts of uncertainty and indecision when it came to her major in college. Biology, history, chemistry, English, math. ``I was almost a math-econ major until I got into that level of math that's just amazing.''

Economics won out through ``a process of elimination,'' and after graduation, she promptly put her degree to work, launching a career in waitressing that would last her two years and take her through three states. ``I was definitely fighting the system,'' she said. ``I did not want a nine to five.''

Of course, that attitude led her to the straight-laced banking industry, where she got a job through a temp agency as an assistant to a loan officer. Taking the skills she picked up at her one and only computer class at Pomona (``I think Pomona prepared me how to use a help manual''), she organized the small bank's spreadsheets, mailing labels and databases.

A year later, she left for a job at a Pasadena network engineering firm, and then on to EDS Corp., where she has been for the past six years and is now doing sales support services.

But like every third person in Los Angeles, Johnson is waiting for her big break into show business.

``I work with computers to pay my bills, but I actually do stand-up comedy and I'm at acting school,'' said Johnson, who had an appearance on the Discovery Channel in March illustrating stage fright on a documentary about fear. ``I don't look at computers as my life. That's more theater and comedy.''

For any Nappie agents out there, Johnson is looking for representation.

Jack used to write programs that calculated the trajectory of missiles. His role wasn't finding the target, though, it was figuring out where the missile would land after a self-destruction signal was sent to it.

Now, the former rocket scientist for the National Space and Aeronautics Association is at home, trying to keep up with technology that seems to be moving faster than some of the missiles with which he used to work.

``What dismays me is the rapidity with which the technology changes and it's difficult to keep up, to stay on top, stay current and stay relevant,'' said Stiles, who lives in Saratoga with his wife, Jan, their daughters grown, married and out of the home.

Currently, he's marketing software for writers to track manuscripts, a product inspired by his wife, an editor and writer. While Stiles finds the technical aspects of developing software intriguing, other parts of the business are less so.

``I've always been technically inclined,'' said Stiles, who turned down an opportunity to study engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles when he chose to attend Pomona and majored in mathematics. ``But I probably like marketing the least. It takes a different kind of personality than a technician's personality. You have to like to be out there schmoozing with people, and that's not me.''

Not that he didn't try the management route.

``I was always getting pushed into management type of stuff, and when I was young, I thought, that's great, let's go Mahogany Road and all that kind of stuff,'' Stiles said. ``Then I got there, and it just wasn't for me.''

He currently offers free trial copies of his SwiftTrack for Manuscripts, making it available in Compuserve's writing tools library in the writer's forum.

Stryder doesn't sound like the typical Gen-X victim of geeksploitation.

``I get self-exploited,'' said Thompkins, who works out of his San Francisco apartment creating Web sites for a political consultancy. ``I definitely have the killer job.''

While everyone else at the Carol / Trevelyan Strategy Group does heavy-lifting in public policy research and political campaigns, Thompkins develops sites for clients such as the Communications Workers of America and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. He also constructed Sen. Dianne Feinstein's Web site in 1994, the first for a senate race.

Creating politics-oriented Web sites is a natural for Thompkins, who started as a government major at Pomona before turning to art. After graduation, he worked at a North Carolina newspaper, dabbling in everything from pre-press production to writing music reviews.

Now, despite the poor quality of writing on the Web, the lax attitude to production values, and the guinea pig atmosphere of anything on the Internet, he's having fun in the fastest-moving industry around.

``I could do this forever,'' said Thompkins, who is launching a video production department for political advertising campaigns. ``The typical political advertisement is so crappy and technology is getting to the point where you can afford to do a really nice advertisement for under $5,000 with an initial $15,000 investment.''

Alan's careers have spanned three continents, and ranged from genetics research to vending machine sales, and it began when he realized he wanted to be a doctor for all the wrong reasons: his father's approval, the social respect, the money. The usual.

When it came time to apply to medical schools during his senior year, the error became evident to him, and he faced the question that a lot of college graduates face: Now what?

``There was a big blank,'' Wick said.

So off he went to a kibbutz in Israel for a year where he worked on farms and found an interest in ecology, which he pursued at Arizona State University, the first in a string of graduate school programs that he started but did not complete. Afterwards, he spent five years studying genetics at the University of California, Berkeley, and then more genetics in India.

On his way back to the United States, a stay in Paris that was supposed to last five days ended up being a year and a half of working in a cancer research institute.

While he fell in love with Paris, he also confirmed that he didn't really like genetics.

``One of the main reasons I didn't get into the field was that I didn't like research in biological fields. There were too many variables,'' Wick said. ``Computers are a lot simpler than anything that's living. They're binary and you can control the environment a lot better.''

But before he found computers, he wandered through a string of other jobs, including teaching high school and junior college, selling candy bars and soda through vending machines, and counseling schizophrenics at a half-way house to find out if he wanted to go into clinical psychology. It took him 4 1/2 years to decide that wasn't for him.

A career counselor suggested that computer science would interest him, so at age 39 he went back to school, earning a bachelor's degree from Cal State Hayward in 1981. He now works on networks for Chevron and feels he's finally found a home.

``There's a certain innate interest in a logical way of thinking that's important,'' Wick said. ``It's an enjoyment of solving logical problems and puzzles.''

The fluid nature of the high-technology industries has opened opportunities for those facile and intrepid enough to change gears on the run. Given the experience of Nappies in the business, there doesn't appear to be any single route to the computer industry, other than first starting out in the opposite direction.

Jonathan Gaw
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