Thank you for the kind words. I understood most concepts in chemistry with the exception of pchem. I've know very few people that had their head around pchem. But, I had a good understanding of most chemistry courses (not bragging but just thankful).
I worked for a bleachery for less than a year as my first job. I excelled at that job but didn't like it because it was the hottest and dirtiest place I had ever worked in my life. Plus, it was a very crude form of chemistry. The company tried to talk me into staying and offered me a small increase in salary to stay, but I just didn't like working there.
I then worked for a small privately own pharmaceutical company for about 3 1/2 years in Greenville. I loved that job but it was a small company and the pay was not very good. But I was doing a lot of developmental work for them before I left in Dec. of 1973 and that was a prestigious job to only have a BS degree in Chemistry. I had my own gc (gas chromatography) which the company only had one but I was the only chemist allowed to use the instrument. LOL! But, again I wasn't making very much money.
Then I went to work with the company where I spend the last 40 years of my working career. I started on the bench performing assays and analysis on the Intravenous Solutions, which was nothing more than cookbook chemistry compared to the analytical work I was use to performing. After working on the bench for nine months I was promoted into management in a different area of the pharmaceutical operation. And I never worked on the bench again after September 1974. But when I left the company 40 years later I had a nice pension and 401K. Plus, the company had an employee stock option plan that employees could buy stock at a 15% discount up to 12% of their salary.
And the only reason I am going into this much detail is to encourage all graduates that have not yet found their dream job is to not give up and keep trying. It's out there somewhere, you might have to relocate or even move into a different field but there are opportunities. I had to relocate and leave my close knit family but I did what I had to do and I have not regretted it for a minute. And as far as Greenville is concerned, I could have returned when I retired six years ago but choose to stay here.
