Going back to college.
Or trying to, anyways.
I've finally settled on the observation that I really, really don't want to be stuck in my current job ten or five or possibly even three years down the road. There's no possibility for advancement, the salary increases are anemic and well below industry standard, and the upper management continues to impose illogical rules that subvert morale and make the individual feel more like a cog in an uncaring machine. Towards that end, to get out of being a warehouse jockey, I need to dust off old, long-unused skills. I guess I'm hoping to get back into programming, and I've got a weird idea that I'm not sure will work. (In any case, it's a long-term development thought that's going to require quite a bit of consideration and experiments, since I'm not even sure if it's wholly feasible or profitable.)
Anyways, to dust off those skills I'm going back to college. Not sure whether I want to try for a master's or not, so on the advice of family and friends I'm dipping my feet first in community college. Last night, after a lengthy day at work and low on blood sugar, I took a local college's assessment test.
Overall, I think I did fairly well. The reading comprehension and grammar sections I'm pretty sure I aced, along with the arithmetic section. The essay I think I did decently on -- 300 to 600 words on whether Abraham Lincoln was right in that happiness is a choice that a person can make (wherein I said that choice was sometimes overridden by the larger environment which can be beyond one person's choices or control).
And then there was the college-level math section. Twenty questions of algebra and trigonometry concepts that I haven't used in fifteen years or more. I think I didn't do too badly on it, but I couldn't remember the first thing about logarithmic roots and there was one problem involving comparative analysis of fractions of the square root of 3 that I banged my head against for 10 minutes before finally taking a wild stab (which I think was wrong, since the questions seemed to get abruptly easier after that). Other than that, though... pretty good.
Afterwards I went, grabbed dinner, and then saw a showing of "The Social Network". The movie was... strangely fascinating. Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerburg in his pre- and post-Harvard era was nuanced, intense, and a role I could empathize if not sympathize with. It made me think a lot about whether I was anywhere near as talented, but also made me realize -- waking up this morning -- that taking the test and stretching my mind to recapture those long-lost concepts was something I really liked. I liked the challenge of it. It's something my current job provides nothing remotely like.
So... yeah. I'm going back to college to relearn how to program, after a fashion. Call me crazy if you like (particularly since so many programming jobs have been shipped off to China, Russia, or India), but I'm going to chase it.
I've finally settled on the observation that I really, really don't want to be stuck in my current job ten or five or possibly even three years down the road. There's no possibility for advancement, the salary increases are anemic and well below industry standard, and the upper management continues to impose illogical rules that subvert morale and make the individual feel more like a cog in an uncaring machine. Towards that end, to get out of being a warehouse jockey, I need to dust off old, long-unused skills. I guess I'm hoping to get back into programming, and I've got a weird idea that I'm not sure will work. (In any case, it's a long-term development thought that's going to require quite a bit of consideration and experiments, since I'm not even sure if it's wholly feasible or profitable.)
Anyways, to dust off those skills I'm going back to college. Not sure whether I want to try for a master's or not, so on the advice of family and friends I'm dipping my feet first in community college. Last night, after a lengthy day at work and low on blood sugar, I took a local college's assessment test.
Overall, I think I did fairly well. The reading comprehension and grammar sections I'm pretty sure I aced, along with the arithmetic section. The essay I think I did decently on -- 300 to 600 words on whether Abraham Lincoln was right in that happiness is a choice that a person can make (wherein I said that choice was sometimes overridden by the larger environment which can be beyond one person's choices or control).
And then there was the college-level math section. Twenty questions of algebra and trigonometry concepts that I haven't used in fifteen years or more. I think I didn't do too badly on it, but I couldn't remember the first thing about logarithmic roots and there was one problem involving comparative analysis of fractions of the square root of 3 that I banged my head against for 10 minutes before finally taking a wild stab (which I think was wrong, since the questions seemed to get abruptly easier after that). Other than that, though... pretty good.
Afterwards I went, grabbed dinner, and then saw a showing of "The Social Network". The movie was... strangely fascinating. Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerburg in his pre- and post-Harvard era was nuanced, intense, and a role I could empathize if not sympathize with. It made me think a lot about whether I was anywhere near as talented, but also made me realize -- waking up this morning -- that taking the test and stretching my mind to recapture those long-lost concepts was something I really liked. I liked the challenge of it. It's something my current job provides nothing remotely like.
So... yeah. I'm going back to college to relearn how to program, after a fashion. Call me crazy if you like (particularly since so many programming jobs have been shipped off to China, Russia, or India), but I'm going to chase it.