This is the first of hopefully many blogs in my spot. So I will begin with the title of my blog, cityratblogs which I identify with. I grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago that had crime, poverty, and violence problems. Lot's of neighborhoods in urban cities can probably identify with having these sort of problems but I can only discuss the one I lived in. It's the west side of Chicago, sort of in between Humboldt Park and Garfield Park. We didn't have much money and I remember the refrigerator being empty a lot. My mom used to walk around the neighborhood with me, knocking on doors and asking people to help fill her grocery bag. It was that kind of poor. My dad worked for the city driving a garbage truck and my mom worked in Marshal Fields factory. Even though it was financially tough on my parents, they sent my three brothers, one sister and myself to Catholic school. I got a very good education from the inner city Catholic schools that I attended.
This previous paragraph was written to paint a picture so that I can explain why I refer to myself as a Cityrat. It stems from several rat hunting incidents that occurred in my neighborhood during my childhood. The neighborhood was plagued with rats so much so that men would go out in parties with bats and kill rats. My dad and and brothers used to partake in the events. One particular incident I was playing in the mud in the gangway of our house when a group if neighborhood guys were working on breaking up a rat's nest in the alley behind my house. I could see them trying to break up the cement with their bats then a sudden rush of bat hitting started because the rats started pouring out from underneath the cement. As I sat in the mud between my house and the neighbors I suddenly saw a flurry of rats start running my way. I could do nothing but sit there as they ran past me. For a young person this was immensely frightening and completely unexpected. People who grew up in neighborhoods like mine are like those rats: sticking together, hiding from the bad stuff, then running when they have to just to live another day. So that's me, a Cityrat. I am loyal to my friends and family, stay away from things that can hurt you, and I keep going forward to live another day.
Jump ahead to college, I survived the rats. I went to a college I could afford but was still very good, University of Illinois at Chicago. Most people call it UIC or if you're older you referred to as Circle Campus. It was called Circle Campus because of the Roman like circular forum in the middle of the campus. I graduated with a BA in education but I knew did not want to teach young children so I immediately started working on my Masters in Computer Science. After 5 years, I graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology with a Masters in Computer Science. Even though I'm still paying on the student loans, it was a good choice because that school has a good reputation which has opened doors for me.
I got into a career in IT after five years of teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. More to come on this in future blogs.
I am currently working on my Doctorate in Computer Science which is why I started this blog. I believe this blog will be about my ideas on the future of IT. Right now, I'm thinking about communication challenges with remote workers. The pandemic has pushed people to work from home and now a good amount of them do not want to go back to the office. This presents a problem for communication, team building, and collaboration. I am researching what the future might be if the workforce stays home for the foreseeable future.
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