[TriLUG] Career planning - certs(?)

[Cristóbal Palmer]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Alan Porter <porter at trilug.org> wrote:
>
>
> You might also try asking this sort of question on IRC.

He did. I pointed him here.

So that I'm not utterly worthless to this conversation, I'll toss out
my own path: started with my own laptop. Went cold turkey, quitting XP
for Debian. Got myself hired at a small company (I was employee #3).
Came back to school to finish my undergraduate work. Stayed around and
am still here for a Masters of Science in Information Science at UNC.
I work for ibiblio.org, which is a collaboration of two schools here
at UNC.

Not that my path is terribly useful to you. There are many paths, none
more valid than the one that makes you happy.

If I were you, I'd take a step back and ask what it is about the title
"sysadmin" that makes you want it. Is it the sysadmins you personally
know and look up to? Is it something else? I've known some very happy
sysadmins and some very stressed-out ones. I know sysadmins in
academia and sysadmins out in the corporate world. There are many
different sub-species of sysadmin.

I guess what I'm saying is, pick a more specific goal and then work
for that. Also, if you decide you want to wander down the RHCE path,
let this list know because a study group might pop out of nowhere.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal M. Palmer
"Small acts of humanity amid the chaos of inhumanity provide hope. But
small acts are insufficient."
 -- Paul Rusesabagina