this is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife...

How Did I Get Here?

Well, it's a long story I guess, but I'll skip to the good parts about why I decided to go to school, why I chose to go into the IT/Networking field, and all that good stuff. 

It's been a long journey up to this point but it only got started in earnest about a year ago when I decided to self-study to earn my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Assistant certification).  Knowing that I like techie things, my sister-in-law mentioned that she was self-studying around August of last year and gave me all her material and some kind words of encouragement.  I thought that I could work four, ten hour + days and study on my own on my off days.  This proved harder than I thought.  So, due to a series of events, I decided to quit my job and study full time on my own.  Again, this was a bit more difficult that I had anticipated.  I found that the discipline wasn't there, the free style of no tests (that I could find), lack of deadlines, and other slacker excuses were much too enticing for my wandering mind.  But I did manage to learn enough to take the CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician certification) exam.  I could never understand how devices worked within the OSI and TCP/IP models and though I scored over 98% on the rest of the exam's sections, I scored low enough on the other part for me to fail my exam.  It was heart breaking.  It took me a few months to even consider going to school because of the wealth of information that is available online but due to financial constraints six months of self-study can put people in, I thought it would be best to work in a structured class room environment full of faculty, staff, and fellow students to help beat what I call 'the interconnectedness of all things' into my head (oddly, I have less problem with the Zen philosophy of it than I do with the networking ripoff). 

Why not just do something else?

 I really enjoy building things.  I really enjoy building systems, charts, and other materials that help me understand things.  I like adventure and excitement (totally not Jedi material).  I enjoy feeling God-like while creating.  I also like making money.  Networking would let me feed all those beasts and enjoy the fruits of my labor.