| Members' 25-Year Reminiscences Ted Orosz Director, Manhattan-Bronx Bus Planning In the spring of 1974, I was finishing my Master's in Urban/Environmental Studies at Rensselaer. (The program has since closed.) I handed in my "Practicum" in February and took off for a grand tour of Europe. When I returned in April, some of the guys were talking about going to the ASPO conference in Chicago in mid-May. Apparently, there was a Job Market and agencies that needed staff and those looking for work connected there. I invited myself along. At the last moment, the car that was to carry us to Chicago expired and the replacement vehicle, a Volkswagen, did not have enough room for the last guy, me. I scraped together a few dollars and flew to Chicago. I stayed with my Uncle and rode the "L" to the conference for about five days in a row. The conference, by the way, was in the Palmer House. I never went to a session; I spent the entire time at the Job Market. Each entry-level job had a line of potential candidates waiting to speak to the beleaguered interviewer. I recall one position involved something to do with solid waste. I had actually taken a graduate course on solid waste issues. I thought that this put me on solid footing to interview for the job. The fellow in front of me in line though, was carrying along his 700-page dissertation on solid waste. And so it went for most of that week. It was the most depressing experience of my life. When the conference ended, I hitched back to New York, as I had never seen Indiana, and, well, I had no more money. I went back to my temporary assignment at the State Bank of Albany and spent the summer contemplating how I would ever get into planning. Sometime in August, I got a message from a person whose name I did not recognize, asking if I was interested in a job. I had to check the area code before I called back to find out where they were calling from. As it turned out, one of the many resumes I dropped off at the ASPO conference took root. By mid-September, I was working at the Pioneer Valley Regional Planning Commission in Springfield, Massachusetts. I had no recollection at all of having spoken to the Director of that agency in Chicago. The planning road took me from Massachusetts to Minnesota, and ultimately, back to New York. All the while, I have been a member of ASPO and then APA. I've never forgotten that I got my first position at a Job Market, despite all odds to the contrary, and I tell this story to students and others trying to break in. | |
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