Plan "A" was to be a professional baseball player. Plan "B" was to be an architect. Plan "C" was to be an archeologist.
I was offered some scholarships to play ball in college but none of the programs that offered me scholarships to play ball had architecture as a major. Plus, there was a "girlfriend" involved at the time so I gave up baseball and went to architecture school at UT.
Upon graduation I worked for a small firm in east Texas for about 4 months. They went belly-up and let everyone go after not getting some of the jobs that they were banking on. Fortunately for me I had worked for a civil engineering firm for 5 summers doing some design work for them so I had gained a bit of "engineering" background.
A local mining equipment manufacturing company was ramping up their engineering staff so I applied and was hired. This was in 1989. I am still with the company even though we are now on our third owner. I spent about 15 years in engineering being responsible for all hydraulic and pneumatic systems on the mobile mining equipment. For the last 15 plus years I have been on the commercial side being heavily involved in product management, sales/marketing and applications. The job has provided a very comfortable living plus it has allowed me to travel to most States and over 30 different countries.
About a year into the job the architectural firm called me and wanted to know if I wanted to come back. No thanks and no regrets. It did, however, take about a year before I would even talk about or watch a baseball game once I hung up the cleats.