I Have Found My Happy Place

in the IT field that is.

I can't believe one year have already passed since my on-the-job training. It was hard to adjust at first. Leia and I had a rough start. The only thing that kept us going was knowing that we were living in a very beautiful subdivision for free, we get to eat in almost all restaurants/food chain in the nearby SM every weekend, and I get to wear (and buy new clothes for) corporate attire (which honestly, really makes me feel happy. :).Despite all the stresses, the endless photocopy jobs, and the little trouble we went through during that 250-hour OJT, I am so thankful because I learned a lot (both IT-related and not). Since the call center I had my internship on was catering technical support for Linksys devices, and we were assigned in the Training department, we get to listen to the lectures and before our intrernship ended, we had a special mini-lecture series from the trainers there. We also get to harness our computer troubleshooting and reformatting skills, plus a lot of tips and tricks in computer security from our boss, the lab administrator of the training lab. So yeah, that was my first time to be exposed to networking devices, and learn how to configure routers and all. We also did an inventory of all the networking devices there so up until now, I am still a bit familiar with the model numbers of some of the devices. Haha! I actually enjoyed the training and I'm happy that I learned a lot during our OJT.

Then I took up Network Administration as an elective. And the rest is history. Haha! I fell inlove with the subject. Our teacher also inspires me and my classmates a lot. His encouraging stories give me hope and patience to endure BSIT, a course I never liked ever since I realized it was not as easy as I thought and flunked my first major subject. Yesterday, we had a meeting. Our teacher wanted to confirm who are the ones who are really committed to join the review and take the exam. I never thought it would be an inspirational talk kind of meeting. Haha! His stories about people he trained who are now at the peak of their careers now and of course stories of his own life of course. Imagine, there are only more or less 30,000 people in the world who passed the CCIE exam of Cisco. Wouldn't it be nice to be known as one of the 30,000 elite and unique people on earth? We are only gearing up for the CCNA. I'm not aiming for the CCIE yet. But this is already a big accomplishment and a big stepping stone for me and my classmates. For me, I'm just loving networks more and more now. Partly because of the demand of network engineers abroad, and partly because all this time I thought I can never love IT and now, here comes a field I know I enjoy studying and will still enjoy studying in the future. No matter what happens, if I go that far or not, this step is a very crucial part of my studies so I really need to do good. I want my dad to be proud of me. Review classes will start soon and I'm excited and nervous at the same time. So wish me luck in this endeavor.