School Again

by | Apr 2, 2012

Back at school for my third semester of Computer Systems Tech. I’m taking a moment on my lunch break to reflect on what, if anything, I learned last semester.

1. PHP. This is an interesting language. The constant feeling that you’re building a house out of string and twigs, and if you change the wrong thing it will collapse – and you can’t be sure what’s the wrong thing. Yet somehow I got top marks on all the exams? Makes no sense. I want to FEEL as if I’ve mastered it, not just outwardly appear so.

2. Database queries are not nearly as hard as I once thought, once you have a couple examples to work with. Normalization, on the other hand, never really made sense to me.

3. I am capable of extraordinary things under pressure. Not necessarily my best work, but good enough and on time, when I thought all was lost. On the other hand, the rest of my life suffers. Laundry and dishes go unwashed, appointments are forgotten, and my sometimes brusque manner gets worse.

I’m running low on money and questioning whether taking a part time job was a good decision, or if the company is a good fit. I get distracted by motorcycles and I’m still not as social as I want to be. But the semester is off to a good start and nothing major has actually gone wrong yet, even though I always feel as if disaster is lurking nearby. We’ll see.