How I began working my way through school (and college)

 In the 1950s high school meals were made in large batches from scratch, so when I knew they'd be serving my favorite meals, I'd join the volunteer students who helped serve and then I could eat as much of my favorite food as possible for free. (me- on the Academic track - got to know a lot of the kids on the commercial track that way. 🙂  

They also pointed out that I could skip the last weeks of school before Christmas by joining their training classes that trained kids to work in stores during the Christmas rush. What's not to like? I got paid plus got the store discount to buy presents for my family. And I had a large family.)

And I used that training to work part time all throughout my college years, even in grad school.

Since I had a year of secretarial training my first year of college, I then had the skill to part-time join a typing pool and then was promoted to operate the very first IBM word processor - the MT/ST Machine. 

 MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter), which connected the Selectric typewriter with a separate magnetic tape drive. Magnetic tape was the first reusable storage medium for typed information.