"Mr. O'Keefe, I haven't talked to you for a while. What do you think is the correct answer? And kindly walk us through your reasoning."
I'm drawing an absolute blank. I've been listening to this guy talk for the last 2 hours and my brain shut down about 20 minutes ago. This is common for me when I'm being bombarded with new concepts and technical nomenclature. Oh I'm still listening and being polite, but to recall the difference between Fibre Channel and SCSI technology while determining the advantages of something called "failover clustering" to answer this practice problem is not gonna happen.
"I don't know."
It comes out even more pathetic than it sounds. You can't hear the shaky falsetto. The instructor is clearly not impressed. Fortunately he decides to pick on someone else...for now.
Question 15. "Mr. O'Keefe, what do you think?"
I almost protest in exasperation: "What the heck guy, you already hassled me?!" Another blank. The question asks something about a printer setup across multiple sites. I better not cop out of this one or he might ask me to leave.
"I would eliminate 'A' since Windows Server Datacenter seems like overkill."
"O.K...but how does that tie into the specific requirements? [Sigh] Which options should we be able to eliminate right off the bat based on what we know about the existing infrastructure?"
I'm now staring very intently at the answers projected on the screen, pretending to dissect them in my head. I can feel my face turning red. He approaches my desk and casually rests his arm on the top of my computer case. I can feel a pool of sweat accumulating on my forehead and try to internally calm my nerves so it doesn't reach a critical mass and flow down into my brow.
"I don't know."
But this time I say it without any attempt to mask my frustration. The 19-year old know-it-all behind me shrieks with delight and begs for the opportunity to answer. The instructor relents and allows the kid to explain to everyone what I so clearly do not understand.
Going back to school has not been easy. Leona often observes that "I'm studying a lot" but I feel like there is so much about server administration, and computers more generally, that continues to allude me. I realize why I didn't take more of an interest before - because interest alone would not have been sufficient. But I press on, recalling the needs of the hospital and what little I might offer in service to them.
I'm drawing an absolute blank. I've been listening to this guy talk for the last 2 hours and my brain shut down about 20 minutes ago. This is common for me when I'm being bombarded with new concepts and technical nomenclature. Oh I'm still listening and being polite, but to recall the difference between Fibre Channel and SCSI technology while determining the advantages of something called "failover clustering" to answer this practice problem is not gonna happen.
"I don't know."
It comes out even more pathetic than it sounds. You can't hear the shaky falsetto. The instructor is clearly not impressed. Fortunately he decides to pick on someone else...for now.
Question 15. "Mr. O'Keefe, what do you think?"
I almost protest in exasperation: "What the heck guy, you already hassled me?!" Another blank. The question asks something about a printer setup across multiple sites. I better not cop out of this one or he might ask me to leave.
"I would eliminate 'A' since Windows Server Datacenter seems like overkill."
"O.K...but how does that tie into the specific requirements? [Sigh] Which options should we be able to eliminate right off the bat based on what we know about the existing infrastructure?"
I'm now staring very intently at the answers projected on the screen, pretending to dissect them in my head. I can feel my face turning red. He approaches my desk and casually rests his arm on the top of my computer case. I can feel a pool of sweat accumulating on my forehead and try to internally calm my nerves so it doesn't reach a critical mass and flow down into my brow.
"I don't know."
But this time I say it without any attempt to mask my frustration. The 19-year old know-it-all behind me shrieks with delight and begs for the opportunity to answer. The instructor relents and allows the kid to explain to everyone what I so clearly do not understand.
Going back to school has not been easy. Leona often observes that "I'm studying a lot" but I feel like there is so much about server administration, and computers more generally, that continues to allude me. I realize why I didn't take more of an interest before - because interest alone would not have been sufficient. But I press on, recalling the needs of the hospital and what little I might offer in service to them.
wow, that sounds really tough! way to stick in there.
ReplyDelete