My path wasn't quite so straight forward. I went to a large state University (30,000 students) right out of high school, and I wasn't ready for that. While I was there, I got a summer job at a naval shipyard, and by chance ended up in a group responsible for making sure submarines were quiet. A big part of the job was conducting machinery vibration measurements, sonar trials and all the instrumentation to accomplish that. Our group also supported testing/troubleshooting on surface ships. What a fantastic learning opportunity. To troubleshoot problems, I never knew what was coming up next. Main propulsion turbine with excessive vibration? Off to the machine shop where a similar turbine was in the middle of being overhauled. I got to see the internal workings, talking to the machinists who actually knew how things went together and where problems could occur. 300 horsepower motor with a problem in the electrical shop? Off to talk to the electricians.
I had found my calling. I went back to school for a quarter, and decided to take "a quarter" off. My boss in the shipyard was happy to have me back full time. Duties and responsibilities ever increased, and as the guy who understood the instrumentation beyond the routine uses, a lot of strange and unique measurement and analysis tasks fell to me. I was working well beyond my pay grade, including often managing engineers in projects, but without a degree, my pay was never going to be commensurate with the work I was doing.
My "quarter off" turned into 7 years before I went back to university, as a co-op student with the shipyard (meaning they paid my tuition and books). Older and wiser, this time I went to a small private school (where many of the students were in a similar position) and graduated with a BSME degree.
I stayed with the shipyard for a while after that, until I was lured away by an engineering services firm. A large part of their work was supporting machinery vibration analysis on the aircraft carrier fleet, but given my talents, most of my work there was in engineering services, centered around measurement and analysis of "strange problems". The phone would ring, and suddenly I'd be off doing something completely different for a few days or weeks.
One hint I learned working in the shipyard. Our group was in an open office area, and my desk was near, but behind my boss's desk. Everybody thought that was the worst place to be, because he'd take a phone call about something that needed to be done, turn around and I'd be the first person he would see.
If I heard him talking about something I wanted to do, when he hung up the phone, I'd ask him if he'd heard anything more about whatever he was talking about, or ask him if there was something I could do. On the other hand, if the call was about something I didn't want to do, I'd either be head deep in some project or I would have suddenly gone for a walk when he turned around. "I though Jon was here. Will you go take care of this?"