4.03.2014

Calculating...A Networking Student: T minus 48 days

I've rounded third and I'm heading home! I'm so close to graduating now I can taste it! This semester has gone fairly smoothly so far. As far as my technology courses go, first up,  I'm enrolled in CompTIA Security+ course. I've been taking this one online (my only program related course that I've had to take online) because it's not offered at the Downtown Milwaukee campus here at MATC. The course is going well, with interesting things to learn about overall security. Unfortunately, we are again using TestOut. At this point in my student 'career' I can honestly say I've 100% had it with using TestOut. It drags on and on and most of the time its extremely boring. In this particular course, completing the entire Security+ TestOut accounts for just 5% of my total grade. To give you an idea of what that 5% takes I will just tell you I've put maybe 20 hours so far into it and I'm not even halfway through with completing it. The amount of time it takes to complete this doesn't seem to fit the grade worth to me. Needless to say, it's very frustrating. I'd much rather just watch CBTnugget videos.

Next up is our Emerging Technologies VMware VCP course. It's going great actually. I cannot state this enough but,  it is a MASSIVE amount of information to learn. We get a good mix of lectures with some great best practice lessons. Mix this in with our daily lab work and reading assignments and there's more than enough information to require a storage upgrade in your head. The required book we have is brutal as far as things to remember but honestly there's so much you can do with VMware I really don't see any other way of reading about it. Overall, I've been having fun in the course. I mix in a little practice time at home with a simple home lab for practice. What's also interesting, is it seems this course has the highest concentration of enterprise professionals in it, so our class has an interesting mix of people in the industry and students.

Lastly, our program is finished off by our Capstone Project course. This class is a final project that aggregates and culminates everything we've learned up until this point. It mixes in our MS Server and Client, Cisco, and VMware skills that we have been developing over the entire program. Staying on top of everything throughout the year really helps out in this class and I think it goes very smoothly if you retained a lot of what you had learned. What's equally nice is in case you didn't retain everything, this course is great for brushing up on topics via the lectures at the beginning of the day. Every class covers a topic on best practices of AD, Server, and Diagramming etc etc.

So, just under 7 weeks to go and I will officially have my degree!  If you are still with me at this point, I think it will be interesting to see the transition that will be made from student to IT professional.