The Ladder to Success for My Dad

When you begin to take the first step onto the ladder of life, it is difficult to go in blind. At least according to my dad, Bob Jackson, as he made his way through his young life, he didn’t know where to begin. With a father who worked shift work at a factory, there was little to go off of. Yet as I talked to him, I realized that no matter what path you travel down, change can always be for the better.

Coming out of high school, my dad was caught between a rock and a hard place, not knowing what careers, colleges, or opportunities were out there, he jumped straight into a world of craziness, with little guidance. Being the oldest child in his family, and coming from a town like Brainerd, Minnesota, he only had his parents to base his future off of. Yet, what his dad did was the last thing he wanted to do. Working shift work at Potlatch Paper Company was not within his radar. His only option was to jump straight into college. My dad began his generals at Brainerd Community College, and was looking into furthering his college career in pharmacy.

As he made his way through the college experience, he realized BCC could only take him so far. After two years of hard work, he made his way to North Dakota State University, and tried to enter the pharmacy program. Yet, I knew my dad wasn’t into pharmacy, so I asked what happened to that dream, and what a response I got. Dad said, “With the high demand of pharmacists at the time, the program was only taking students whose cumulative high school and college GPA’s were a perfect 4.0, so I decided to switch to polymers and coatings. Yet after I started studying that, I realized I didn’t want to work in that field, so I switched to organic chemistry because the classes were similar.” As he...

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...ugh the travel took him away from home, he also got to see many neat places, including most of the continental United States, as well as Bussan, South Korea. As my dad made his way through sales, he went from Sales Engineer to Sales Manager, yet he still had the same job description just with added responsibilities

As, Dads career’s progressed he has now moved into the position of President at Stern. His duties have risen to being responsible for most of the previous positions he once had, that include, sales, customer service, engineering, quality assurance, and production, still dad has plans to go even further.

So in conclusion, I found a person who started in one position and never saw himself going any further. Yet, as he started to find satisfaction in what he was doing, he realized others saw further potential, and decided to climb the ladder to success.