“Become something like an engineer!”
That was the first—and best—career advice I ever received. It was given to me by my dad, Marcus H. Huling Jr., during one of the many Sunday car rides we took when I was a kid.
Dad worked for Big Apple grocers in Atlanta, and part of every Sunday was spent checking the motors on the store’s refrigeration units. At the time, most stores were closed on Sundays, but Dad knew that if the refrigeration units malfunctioned there would be some foul-smelling food greeting customers come Monday morning. That wasn’t going to happen on his watch.
After church and lunch, my family would pile into Dad’s 1953 Chevy and drive a half hour to the College Park store. If all worked well, we’d be back by dinner. If not, it could be a very long day.
One day we stopped at a drugstore and got ice cream cones. I was 8 years old, and this was one of life’s unquestionable pleasures. As we drove away, though, my parents were less blissful. They were discussing the long hours Dad’s job required, the time spent away from the family. At the first traffic signal, my father turned around and addressed me directly:
“I don’t want you to have to work like me to make a living,” he said. “You should go to college and become something like an engineer!”
I didn’t know what an engineer was, but I did know Dad was serious, and that was good enough for me. I learned everything I could about engineering. I focused on math and science in school. And I set my sights on the only place you’d want to go to get an engineering degree—Georgia Tech—because I wanted to make Dad proud.
During college, when I worked long hours by Dad’s side, I began to feel the same weariness he’d expressed on that Sunday when I was 8. I was annoyed by the monotony of the work and resentful of the time it took away from other youthful pleasures. In retrospect, I see it as yet another gift I got from my Dad.
“Become something like an engineer” was a pointed reminder that I had options he would never have. If I’m proud of anything, it’s that he lived to see me earn that engineering degree from Georgia Tech and, with it, to establish a life where Sundays were, in fact, a day of rest.
Chuck Huling retired as a vice president for Georgia Power and serves as the executive in residence for the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute. He is the chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Board.
Twitter