I have the metric system, or more accurately the SI system (Systeme Internationale) to thank for my career success.
When I was at school, I was taught in the imperial system and I never really understood physics and mechanics. We had the same terms for weight and mass and some seriously weird units for lots of other terms (slug-foot anyone?) Consequently, I never understood whether I was supposed to multiply or divide by 32 (feet per second per second) to get the right answer.
I didn't do too well in the exams and I thought I was a bit thick. When I went to Technical College to study engineering, all the teaching was in SI. The Si system has a coherent set of units (better than the metric system) and is very easy to understand; no problems of knowing whether to multiply or divide by the acceleration due to gravity. All of a sudden everything made sense! I got 95% - 99% in all my exams for two years and got the Henry Brown Prize for meritorious work, with only one given each year. From thinking I was a bit thick to that prize turned me around. I went on to get an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering and lots of well-paid jobs and early retirement at 57. And all because of moving away from the Imperial system. But I still prefer to drink beer in pints, it is a human scale quantity.
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Maynard’s Wine Gums. Use to separate the black ones because I thought they were ’black licorice’ 
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