I started co-opping at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (M.B.T.A.) in Boston - for most of us, known as the T. I stayed there for 9 months and my main function was to help in PC support and maintain their operations database. My friends thought it was funny that as a Computer Science major I was working for the T but there are other things to do there besides driving the trains and buses. Although, I have to admit, that would have been a great deal much more fun, ahahahahah!!!
I got bored with that job and found another one, a "real" job. I went to work for a contracting company in Cambridge called Clam Associates, whose main source of income was at that time, developing IBM's HACMP/6000. Another funny sounding company name - No, not fish business. I can really pick them can't I? This was a software development position. I loved that job and everything that came with it. The people there were excelent and I learned more about programming in those 6 months than I did in 3 years of college. But, they felt that they didn't need any more co-op students and I had to go look for something else.
Then came Thinking Machines Corporation, in Cambridge. For this job I moved from software develoment into Systems Administration. Mostly because I felt that I could use some experience in this area. I also wanted to find out whether this was my piece of pie or if I should stick with software development. I loved it here as well, the atmosphere was very similar to that of Clam, the people were very nice and there's no way to explain how much I learned here. I also made some of my best friends here.