When I asked Lenny Kepil to tell me about his job as an Engineer at Tellabs, my brain cells became tied up in knots when he explained what he does.
The product that I support at Tellabs is an Optical Transport Switch,” said Lenny. “The system is designed to take a variety of subrate circuits (existing optical signals moving at a rate less than the line-side and transport them to their destination on a fiber line divided into 44 channels. Likewise, the destination system will receive and distribute the channels back into individual subrate signals towards their final destination. The system is currently used with the new FiOS Internet/Broadband TV program at Verizon.”
Let’s put it this way: Lenny makes sure that all aspects of the system are operating properly in a network.
When Lenny was growing up, he struggled in school. “Since I was not a child of the ‘internet age,’ my parents relied on doctors, teachers, church, and family members to decide how to handle my hearing loss in regards to my education,” said Lenny.
Lenny was placed in his local school with basically no support services. He was described by his teachers as aloof and not paying attention. The teachers suspected that he had a learning disability and a short attention span.
Totally frustrated one day, his Mom vented to a woman while at the grocery store. Another woman overheard the conversation and suggested that she take Lenny to the Chicago Hearing Society for an evaluation. The tests showed that Lenny’s IQ was just fine and hearing tests showed that he was deaf—not hard of hearing.
Lenny transferred to a junior high that had a program for deaf students but he continued to lag behind and his grades were still low. “Since my sister was a straight-A student, I started to shut down because all I heard was ‘You have to do better, high school is next year, you’ll never go to college, etc.,’” said Lenny.
Lenny’s grades improved in high school and his parents and teachers encouraged him to consider college. Lenny refused—he decided that he didn’t want to deal with any more schooling after such a long struggle to learn through the years. His parents gave him an ultimatum: go to NTID at the Rochester Institute of Technology or get a job and move out.
Lenny decided to pursue Data Processing at NTID, but discovered that he didn’t qualify to get into NTID, because he “lacked the necessary skills to succeed.” Phone calls from his parents and teachers were enough to get him into NTID on a probationary status.
Of the 93 students that entered the same time that Lenny did, only three of them graduated with A.A.S. degrees.
Lenny was one of them. Lenny went on to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He worked for Lucent Technology for almost 23 years before moving on to Tellabs.
So if you’re struggling in school and thinking that college is an unreachable path—just think of Lenny and know that you too, can succeed.