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Back to school, the hard way. Or, who’s bright idea was math anyway?


So let’s see. The last time I thought about educating myself, I ended up chasing Everest College around in a near to endless circle and wound up right back where I started. That is, no closer to being educated and no further ahead with working with the school on making things workable so I could get me educated. The entire point? I wasn’t entirely impressed with the way Algonquin wanted me to go about getting escentially the exact same education. I’m still not overly impressed, but given I’ve been in neutral for the better part of too long already I’ve about run out of options.

I’ve been looking for a way to take the skills I’ve already got in the sysadmin realm and put them on paper, more or less professionally, while at the same time probably picking up a few things I don’t already know. Like, say, why anyone in their right mind would choose to run a corporate website on any version of Windows Server, but you’ll have that. Both Algonquin and Everest offer escentially the same course, with at least moderately close to the same results. The key difference–and it’s a difference I’m still having more than a little difficulty wrapping my head around–is the course at Algonquin not only has a math prerequisit, but also runs a single, solitary math course in the first semester of the program. To what end I haven’t a clue, but beyond the first semester I’ll very next to likely never open a math textbook again in my life. That is–unless I plan on following through on my threat and adding some variation of programming skills onto what this program wants to teach me (Can we say professional student, anyone?).

When I brought up that situation with the guy what ran the course at Everest, even he seemed a bit confused by the requirement–you’re not designing the circuitry, for crying out loud, you’re just piecing what’s already been designed together and making sure component A plays compatibly with operating system B. Escentially a more hands-on perspective of what I used to get paid to do, more or less. And I sure as hell didn’t need math to do it then. But, Algonquin seems to have a different opinion on what it takes to be the guy what fixes their equipment, so we do the dance and hope for the best.

And that’s pretty much why, barring a complete failure of just about everything between me and the college campus, on October 15th I get in line for my very own generous helping of brain damage. The first step is to go through their academic upgrading course, because not thinking I’d need to see myself going back to school 10 years after leaving highschool and not figuring the world would escentially implode economically speaking, taking my job right along with it, and knowing you pretty much didn’t need a whole huge heaping helping of extra education beyond a decent ability to learn quickly while sidestepping from one problem to the next meant I got the hell out of highschool at the first chance handed me. It also meant I didn’t see a need to take a math course in my final years–I took an extra English instead so I could graduate when I was supposed to. Awesome decision then. Probably not so much now.

So I finalize things for my upgrading this week. Then, it’s the sit back and wait game until my course actually starts. And between now and then, I’m sure the idea will hit me at least twice. Who’s bright idea was math anyway?

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