When You Think You Know Things…

When You Think You Know Things…

Quick update on my goals for this year, which I thought I would put at the front of this blog because they lead into my topic for today.

While I have not worked on writing any fiction, I did journal every day this week before bed. Honestly, I don’t know why it took me so long to try it. In the past I’ve been a bit of a binge journaler. Someday I’ll have kids and grandkids that find random notebooks with big chunks of my life with no context or explanation for why that bit felt important enough to write about. Maybe this rendition will be different though. Though, it hasn’t been that helpful to figuring out what to write about here…because I’ve done a lot of processing through the week instead of keeping it all bottled up for the weekend blog. Ha! Oh well. We’ll overcome it.

I’ve been going to the gym (gasp!) to walk on a treadmill four days this past week, starting on Wednesday, which means I’ve had quite a good start. Going from not even thinking about going to the gym to going several days in a row has been a bit of an adjustment—one that I’m enjoying. My average this week has been 8,000 steps, which is a good improvement. (I think it would be higher, but Monday was a snow day and goofed it up!)

Monday being a snow day gave me a chance to work on my Certification that I meant to start back in August.

Basically, because I fell into the I.T. sphere I’ve been feeling the need to give myself a little bit of cred. Had I known back in 2009 (yikes, forever ago) that I would be working in I.T. I would have taken some technology classes in college. But I didn’t know, and I am just an English major muddling through and trying to learn quickly while on the job.

I have learned a lot with just hands-on work, and I’ve got some great teachers with the technology group we partner with. But as we continue to grow and change, I would like to learn a bit more formally and have some more credibility. All of this to say, I am working on modules so I’m prepared to take the certification test.

Because I’ve been doing I.T. for more than 2 non-consecutive years, I expected to start out with a decent base knowledge. You could say there was some pride there. I would confirm.

But let me tell you. Getting A+ Certified on CompTIA is hard. I am nowhere close to being done with it, but it’s a challenge. I do not know nearly as much as I thought I did. It’s been humbling.

My mom can attest that I was really struggling on Monday. She got to listen to my sighs and grumbles. I also laughed at myself a lot.

There were some sections I thought I would do great on, and I didn’t. And a couple sections that I thought I would fail, but I did okay with. To be clear, I have not aced a module yet. Maybe I’ll find one that I’m really good at without having to go through all of the info posts.

In my defense, a lot of the first part is about the physical components that make up a computer—which would be really handy if I was actually building computers. I’m excited to continue through it and get to some of the pieces that I am more familiar with.

While it’s been challenging, it’s been exhilarating. I love learning new things, and I’ve definitely been learning! And I’ve had a couple things come up during the week that I felt more knowledgeable about because of the modules I have done.

So here’s to learning more!