I am now ASQ Certified Quality Engineer #50017.
In 1987 I had to get a job that I could walk to (DWI, first, only, sober ever since). I applied and got a production job at factory nearby. Six months later I was promoted to a job in quality control. I was the only one that applied for the promotion that had taken algebra in high school. My job was to assist the SPC Coordinator: collecting control charts, checking that the control limits were right, that kind of thing. I became fastinated by statistics and spent my spare time at home studying quality control and industrial statistics. I became a very good technician. My position had stagnated because of a lack of formal education when one of the engineers at work suggested that I join the American Society for Quality and test to be certified.
I joined the ASQC in 1994 and took the Certified Quality Technician exam that spring. I passed. It was noticed by the corporate office where I worked. Things were looking up. I decided as a personal goal that I would take the ASQC Certified Quality Engineer Exam in December 1995. I would have had the eight years of on the job experience required to sit for the exam with no formal education.
On the first Tuesday in June 1995 things went bad. I was going to work one morning and I was in an automobile accident (stone cold sober, bad weather, bad luck, it happens). I had a traumatic brain injury as a result of my accident. I spent most of a year learning how to walk and feed and dress myself. It took two years to learn to read and do math again. Being that jobs in quality control don’t fall out of trees in the South Carolina Lowcountry, I went back to school and learned how to fix air conditioners. This year things changed.
In November 2005 I found a notice for a Quality Technician job in a town nearby. I applied and was hired in February 2006. During the interview I was asked what I would like to do in the future. I told them that if I returned to quality control, I would pick up where I left off and take the CQE exam. They were impressed.
On December 2, 2006 I took the American Society for Quality (they dropped the control part, one of the paradigm shifts, I guess) Certified Quality Engineer exam and passed on the first attempt. Please note: I have never had a formal class in quality and I have never had a class in statistics.
I guess you people will not accept BRAIN DAMAGED in an AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT as an excuse either.
