Cat ... I'm too radical to have ever worked for Xerox or IBM and I left a 5-year skyrocketing career with Kinko's Corporate because of the corporate bullshit. Now I work for Sprint PCS (digital, wireless phones). I must admit I like working in high-tech, but I'm not willing to compromise my quality of life and values for the "company." I am, however, a single woman and must pay the bills. Fortunately, our operation in Tallahassee is small (8 fulltime permanent and 8 fulltime temps)and a good percentage of us are "renegades" (for lack of a better word).

To add an addendum to what I stated previously about hiring ... I have never hired anyone unless they were qualified for a position, and, unless it was a company mandate that a candidate have a degree, I would never hire someone just because they have a degree over a more-qualified individual without a degree.

And ... regarding accomplishment ... a feeling of accomplishment is a good thing and it can come from many difference avenues ... I love to iron because I have such a sense of accomplishment when I look at all those clean, starched clothes on hangers. Perhaps that's going a little far afield for some, but you get my drift. When I was singing for a living, though it didn't happen often, I felt a sense of accomplishment when a patron come up to me afterwards and said "You really made me think with that song." And, when you're working something out on the guitar, don't you feel a sense of accompliment when you figure out that last chord?

The words "accomplishment" and "commitment" have gotten a bad rep because they are so often used in the context of "accomplishment, i.e., work until you drop dead on the job."

This has gone astray from the original thread, but I hope the explanation makes my thread response more definitive .... moonchild