SATURDAY STORY - JULY 10, 2021

 SATURDAY STORY - JULY 10, 2021

On Saturdays I write a story.  I’m going to use a graduate of Dakota State’s Information Systems program as a model - but change it all around!!  The first group of Citibank Scholarships (full-ride scholarships) was all male, so, I’ll use an example from down the line.

*****

Hi, I’m Carla Larson from Parkston, South Dakota.  As far as South Dakota goes, Parkston is kind of a typical small town - about 1,800 nice people.  It is mostly a farming community - where the town supports the farms around it with doctors, lawyers, banks, grocery stores, implement deals, schools, law enforcement, churches and all the typical small town functions. 

Parkston has four main churches, two Lutheran, United Church of Christ and a Catholic Church.  I grew up in Salem Lutheran Church - which was originally the Norwegian Lutheran Church and is now an ELCA church.  There is another Lutheran Church in town - Faith Lutheran which is the more conservative Missouri Lutheran Church.  

I was a good student - not the valedictorian, but in the top 10% of the class.  With a graduation of about 45 students, I was #4 in the class.  I wasn’t sure of my career.  My boyfriend, Carl Schneider, graduated a year ahead of me and went through Mitchell VoTech with an agriculture business program.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in Parkston- a great place to grow up - but not many great jobs.  I thought maybe a computer major at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota.  They had computer science (that I thought maybe was a little too technical for me), and a business oriented information systems program that I thought might be good for me.

I applied and was accepted (I had a good ACT score) and Kathy in the admissions office (who was originally from Parkston as well) suggested I apply for a scholarship.  I did apply and got a 50% Citibank scholarship.  I had saved my money from babysitting, and from working at the Subway in Parkston.  So, I had the funding, I had the desire, so off to Dakota State I went in the fall of 1996.

I immediately loved the campus and the program.  

I had a crazy professor for my first class.  Tom Farrell was a retread from being a coach and athletic director.  But, he knew his subject, loved his students, and stomped his foot when something important was covered.  I immediately loved Tom, and with his background knew some of my high school teachers and the coaches at Parkston.

Even my English, math accounting and other courses were taught by ‘teachers”.  Some of my friends had gone to the bigger schools and had graduate students teaching their classes - who just weren’t good teachers.  

Then I had business applications programming in my second semester with Lynette Molstad.  Lynette had a similar background to mine - from White Lake South Dakota - a little west of Parkston.  She also was so awesome.  She was an inspiration to me - similar background, three children, husband was a farmer, and she was a college professor!!  

The campus was small enough that I felt at home.  There was a Lutheran Student organization as well as intramurals, sports, and such a supportive community.  I could walk downtown to the grocery store and get pretty much anything I needed.  Madison isn’t that much bigger than Parkston - maybe 8,000 people.  Not like Sioux Falls which has almost 200,000 population. (A nice place to shop, but just too big for me - so I thought).

My days were full as were my nights - studying, writing programs (and debugging them).  I found I was good at programming and I liked the challenge.  I made friends from around South Dakota and from the region.

After my freshman year, I returned home for the summer.  I commuted to Mitchell and worked at Daktronics - a computerized scoreboard maker. Technically, Daktronics was headquartered in Brookings, but had a satellite office in Mitchell.  I worked on a team that was working on making brighter displays that used less energy.  Soon the team lead found I could do some programming, and I started to write code in a language I didn’t know before that summer (C++).  

Back at Dakota State for my second year, I took COmmon Business Oriented Language (aka “COBOL”) with Connie Daniels.  And, Connie was another person similar to me - married and living on a farm.  But she had worked at Citibank.  She became my advisor and we talked about Citibank and Sioux Falls. 

I also took maybe the hardest class of my college career “OS Interfaces and Utilities” (which was really known as JCL - Job Control Language.  The reality of computing became clear.  Computers were really simple machines - working with 1s and 0s - on and off.  I learned binary, and then octal (base 8) and hexadecimal (base 16), and worked on some horrendous problems on mainframe computers (or so I thought).  All my previous computing had been on PCs - personal computers.  The professor was a jokester, Dr. Bruce White - who was quirky but really awesome.  His tests were really hard.  He talked of this class as being a “rite of passage”.  If you could do JCL, you were going to make it as a computer person.  (Curmudgeon might be a better word for him).

During tests, Dr. White (aka ‘Bruce”) had such nervous energy that he walked around and kicked our bookbags into a pile in the middle of the room.  He too had experience at Citibank.  I think he was really checking us out for potential summer internships at Citibank.  

Spring semester of my sophomore year brought maybe my favorite course - also with Bruce - Systems Analysis and Design.  (How could he teach the hardest class and the best class I don’t know).  This really was the perfect business class.  Going from older systems to new and improved systems.  Build, buy, outsource.  It puts all the programming into perspective.

And, Connie Daniels (“Connie COBOL”) took us deeper into programming with databases and more in the advanced COBOL class.

In spring the BIG Job Fair was held in February in Sioux Falls at the Sioux Falls Arena (mostly since all of my friends were going and my teachers recommended it.  I ran into Tom and Bruce as they were talking up the program to employers..  I interviewed with several companies - but really wasn’t quite ready.  I told myself, “Next Summer I’ll take an internship”.  And, that was the case.  I returned to Daktronics in Mitchell and the project was artificial intelligent display systems.  (There were a few times that I pinched myself - was this really me - Carla Larson from Parkston - working on artificial intelligent signage for the biggest manufacturer of highway signage and sports scoreboards?).  This system could read a licence plate about a quarter of a mile before the main sign and by the time a car got to the sign could say “Larson family exit here for dinner at the ABC cafe”.  (It ran into some legal issues later with privacy concerns, but it was really cutting edge)

For my junior year, I became an RA in Zimmerman Hall (a ‘resident assistant” - which really meant my education was free - with this work, room and board, and my 50% Citibank Scholarship!!)

The last two years flew by - Database systems, electives, RA duties, grading assistant for Connie Daniels.  

And, yes, in the summer between junior and senior years, I interned at Citibank.  I shared an apartment in Dell Rapids with another intern and commuted the twelve miles to Citibank.  WOW - what an experience - working with a top ten multinational company.  

And, of course, after that summer, Citibank made me a glowing offer to return after my senior year as a programmer/analysis - my salary would be about $62,000 (more than my dad made on the farm in a good year).  

*****

So, here I am - twenty years later.  I’m a team lead in the new developments group at Citibank.  I make great money, I absolutely love my work and my team.  

My high school boyfriend (Carl Schneider) and I got married.  Carl and I moved to Dell Rapids and he became an ag lender for the First National Bank in Dell Rapids.  We have two children - Josh - who just turned 18 and is going to Dakota State in the fall, and Emily - who is sixteen and is happy being a cheerleader and a softball player.  

And, one more comment.  In that summer of 2000 when I graduated from Dakota State, I was put in a training class with 25 others - including some from Citibank-Nevada, and Citibank-Jacksonville - and we had six intensive weeks of training with Dr Bruce White.  

Life is so grand!!!  LOVE WINS!!

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Okay, a Pollyanna story that is basically true with some literary enhancements.  I exchanged texts with Carla earlier this week when I wrote my Dakota State experiences.  

As a retired professor, I like knowing that so many have had great lives, and great successes and I was a small part of their successes.  It really was already inside them, and the other professors and I helped students grow and mature.  It’s been an awesome life!!!  (I used to urge the students to get great jobs so they could pay into Social Security for my retirement - which is truer than they might think!!)

LOVE WINS!!

Karen