>>  (technician turned engineer, and glad for both hats!)
>>
>This reminds me of when, in 1959, I was a senior EE student and I got my
ham
>license that year.  I met another ham who was a fire control technician in
>the Navy.  When he learned that I didn't know how to strip wire with my
teeth
>and had not been taught how to draw an arc from the plate of a transmitter
>final to see if there was B+ voltage present, he said I should ask for my
>tuition back  :-)

I like this answer the best!  I was a Fire Controlman in the Navy until a
year and a half ago, when I decided to pick up on my education again, and am
now 10 months away from getting my B.S.E.E..  I really think that this
situation is the best of both worlds, since as a technician in the Navy, I
got LOTS of hands-on experience, sometimes using very unorthadox methods
like stated above!  This technician experience also made it easier to
understand a lot of the advanced theory once I got into some serious
engineering classes, since I had a basic familiarity with what was going on
in a circuit, if not the depth of detail that an engineer requires.  But,
because of this career path, I think that I'm able to design something from
scratch, AND troubleshoot and debug it when it doesn't work, which of
course, it won't!