Now What?

Happy Thursday!  I'm not kidding you this time, after this I'm going to sleep.  It's been one of those weeks where you've been waiting for Friday afternoon since Monday morning and it just ain't comin soon enough.

I was antsy a) because of not going to sleep early enough like always and b) because of being ready to take my N+ test and not being able to take it for another couple of days. 

I don't know if this is an experience you can relate to, but can you imagine a block of eight hours ahead of you where your one goal is to prepare for a thing?  And then you test yourself and go through all the study materials and you think, hey, this ain't no big thang.  And then you have another two eight hours ahead of you where you're still expected to keep on keeping on?  It's deadening.

It was a technical issue that kept me from my goal, so there was nothing to do but sit down and stare at the internet and read whole articles about WAN technologies and routing protocols and CIDR/VLSM and so on and so forth all the while knowing that reading each word wasn't exactly a waste of time, but there sure as heck were other topics out there just waiting to be seen for the first time.

I got yelled at again for not taking at least a half hour on the test.  I swear I tried.  You just can't slow down perfection.

Haha, which isn't to say that I know every networking concept like a champ, I just was super ready for that test.  I'll have the time to iron out the fine details on the job.  But I've spent a month of eight hour days just packing in this info, and I don't know what I would do if I had to spend another day looking at this same old stuff.

 Pretty sure I'll go for the Security+ next, since that seems what people do, and because I took a practice test for it and scored around a 70%.  I could swing a 30%, just give me a couple of weeks.

I think anybody could learn anything if they just sat down all day and studied.  Sure I read a few books on the subject before I started "studying" but after flipping through some relevant chapters just about all of my study material came from the internet.  Practice tests helped me nail down areas that I was less familiar with, and then I went and systematically looked them up.  Some more practice tests and then I looked up about 80% of that again, and again, until I didn't have to look up any more things in particular.  Can you imagine if I could put this effort into like, another language?  I think I could learn anything.

So Security+ and hands-on "interning" on campus, let some of this stuff sink in.  Time to move on from book larnin and get some practical experience.  I will own this.

Also Happy Birthday Dad!  Let's do a puzzle!

Next week: look forward to my not shutting up about Borderlands 2~

-Steph!