Bobbis.net

I subscribe to an RSS feed for The Daily WTF. Basically it's a web site that posts once a day about odd programming things people encounter. I had an encounter posted once before (blog posting).

Anyway, just by looking at all the stupid stuff people do in the real-world make me want to believe that I will not have any problems in the real-world when I get a career. I know my limitations, and I probably undersell myself. It's just that when people in the real-world end up working on a simple problem for several days and don't end up even Googling it, much less looking in the documentation, makes me think anyone with little to no experience can do better.

It's not just The Daily WTF that makes me think about this. Sometimes my classmates make me want to think that they don't have an enthusiasm for their field of study and are in it just for the money. A lot of them make me think that they do whatever is required for the school work then go out to the bar or something unrelated to the field. Having hobbies in the area and especially having a job in the area gives me a competitive advantage in experience a lot of other students are missing out on. I have met other people in class that also have jobs and hobbies in computers, and they are very easy to work with. Working with people who have experience provides each of us an opportunity to learn from each other rather than being the only source of knowledge in a group.

When I'm learning something in class, I have enough experience to know the topic being taught is only the tip of the iceberg. Some people may think it's everything they need to know and consider it enough to put on their resume. I know I have been exposed to COBOL, C++, Visual Basic, Windows Administration, Oracle, etc in class, but I don't believe I know enough in these areas to present them as skills on my resume. I learned a lot about TCP/IP during my summer class, but I'm not about to put it on my resume to lead the reader to believe I know how to handle TCP/IP stacks programatically or configure CISCO routers. Then again, I'm sure some of my classmates will think they know it all and get themselves in trouble when they encounter it in their jobs.

I suppose I'm just a little anxious about where I'm going to be in six months. I don't think there was a time that I didn't know what I will be doing a year down the road. We'll see what happens.