"Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection – that is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement." - from "Mark Twain's Essays, Letters, and Speeches"

Today, I am thinking about how very fortunate I have been to spend my working life with such wonderful people. With very few exceptions, my colleagues have been people of good character working hard together to advance the missions we have shared. I am so grateful for their collaboration, their graceful patience with me, and their affection. I will miss their daily company, the joy of working side by side with them, and the opportunities they have given me to be of use.

After my early experiences working washing windows, shining shoes, as a short-order cook, and busboy, I had the opportunity to work as a student assistant at UC Davis. I had a wonderful boss and some great colleagues. They taught me so much, and working at the Shields Library was a dream job for a guy like me who needed work to help pay for college and who loves books. This was also my first chance to work in IT as we installed their first computerized library management system. The people I worked with there were kind and generous, and it was wonderful to spend so much time in the stacks with all those books! I seriously considered a career change to spend my life working in libraries.

I didn’t take any computer science or MIS classes until after I graduated, as I had started out studying enology, and ended up with a B.S. in Psychology. I was making my living as a bank teller, and working nights as a janitor, when I saw a want ad for a computer operator job at our local county computer center. It was there, among a great group of welcoming people, who knew how to have lots of fun together, that I got the chance to learn more about programming, and to prepare myself for the rest of my career. This was also where I got my first chance to work with IBM mainframes, punch cards, magnetic tape, removable disk packs, and assembler language on an System/370 machine running OS/VS1.

Thanks to my experience at the county, I was able to get a job as an entry-level assembler programmer at a local service bureau serving the savings and loan industry across the US. This was one of the most exciting times in my career as this place had the energy of a startup, and my colleagues there were creating new ways to serve the industry. I’m sure I learned more about programming and technology in my eight and a half years there than at any other time in my career. My colleagues were creative and committed, and the company had a career track that would allow technical people to rise to a level equivalent to Assistant Vice President without management responsibilities.

This was where I first had the chance to work as a systems programmer, and where I found my first great mentor, Gary Sandwick. He taught me not just about technology, but about teamwork, problem solving, and what it means to take personal responsibility for the missions we share. He was my first great role model for how collaboration based on trust is the foundation for most of the best things we do together, and for how to recognize and appreciate people. More than thirty years later, I still find myself thinking about how Gary would handle a particular technical problem, or a situation where I'm trying to help people grow and work together.

He was also the person who introduced me to SHARE (www.share.org). I’ve often said that SHARE has been the best experience of my career, and I know this is true. Gary would come back from a SHARE meeting with all kinds of technical insights, and great stories, and I wanted to go! I’ll never forget him telling me about a talk in the early 80s where he first heard Sibo Friesenberg say "all processors wait at the same speed." It was thanks to him, that I got to go to my first SHARE meeting in 1986, and it was with his support that I began my career as a SHARE volunteer.

From my first day there in 1986, through over twenty years as an active volunteer with the SHARE MVS Storage, and Windows Projects, and on the SHARE Board of Directors, the people of SHARE constantly showed me the reality of their slogan, “SHARE. It’s not an acronym, it’s what we do.” I’ll enjoy the satisfaction of getting to be part of this great organization, and the pride I feel as I remember the work we did together there, as long as I live. It was at SHARE that I first took the lessons I had learned from Gary, and had the opportunity to apply them. Before I became a manager, worked with significant budgets, policies, and strategic planning, I learned about doing these things in my work at SHARE. I’m confident that I owe much of my success as a manager and leader to the experience I gained there.

Of all the gifts I received from my time at SHARE, the greatest are the friendships we formed. Across the country, and around the world, there are wonderful friends I first met there, and I am happy we’ve stayed in touch over the years. My wife and I found two of our dearest friends at SHARE, and we look forward to continuing our adventures, and these special friendships, as retirement gives us more options for spending time together.

For more than 70% of my career, I’ve had the privilege of working with the fine people at our university, and I’m so grateful to have been part of the work we’ve done together helping our students as they pursue their education. Of all the missions I’ve been part of, this is the most meaningful. I have such appreciation for the dedication of my colleagues as they work to support our students, faculty and staff, and to offer innovative IT services that improve teaching and learning.

Through almost 28 years, I’ve worked alongside these people who’ve met each day thinking how they can make a difference for our students. Again and again, I’ve watched them go out of their way to help students new to campus, or dealing with academic or personal problems. Year after year, we’ve watched the stress and anxiety associated with midterms, papers, and finals, and the relief, joy, and pride of commencement. I am proud of my colleagues, and proud to have been among them in sharing this work.

Soon, I will go home to spend more time with my loved ones, the dearest people in the world to me. I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to have more hours and days with these beloved family and friends. I will miss the daily contact with my dear colleagues, and I will make sure to come back to see them from time to time. Looking back over these past 40 years, it is the people who have made the greatest difference for me. The colleagues who made the work so meaningful and, most of all, my beloved wife, family, and friends who fill my life with joy.

© 2017 James Michael. The text of this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0