I did the second of my System Administrator classes online today, and oy.
Once more, I am at the mercy of a teacher goes on and on about a subject without ever defining their terms or going over the basics.
So he’s telling me about things I don’t understand in terms I don’t understand that let you do things I also don’t understand.
So to me, it’s like…
“Now as you can see, Blerp 6.2 really makes it easy to fromp your penkars. And we all know how important THAT is!”
No we do NOT.
I can only assume that he will eventually fill in the gaps Or not. Either way, it is hard on my 51 year old brain. This is not how I would normally choose to learn something. I need the information presented to me in a clear, logical order where you start with the absolute basics and define those, then build upon that.
I don’t think this guy has the faintest idea of what it’s like not to know any of this stuff. I mean, I’m fairly computer literate, but I don’t know what half the things he’s talking about are, and I am not built to get information in whatever order then put it together myself.
I’m sure he thinks he’s pitching this towards beginners, but he ain’t.
But I will adjust. Despite my incomprehension, I got all four questions on the little mini quiz at the end of the chapter right, so clearly some of it is sinking in.
I just have to stretch these old gray cells of mine to accommodate a style of teaching to which I am unaccustomed.
I’m not giving up, though lord knows I felt like doing so many times in the lecture. My brain is not happy with the demands I am putting on it and I felt so totally at sea that I kept thinking, basically, “I’m getting too old for this shit. ”
But I am too damned proud and stubborn to quit now. I will trudge onwards and if I really get hopelessly lost, I can always consult my furry friends, nearly all of which work in IT and many of who are sysadmins themselves.
And I mean, we’re all nerds, and nerds love having their knowledge called upon.
Maybe being a sysadmin is not for me. Maybe it is. The lecturer in question makes the job seem impossibly complex, possibly to stroke his own ego in a backhanded way/
Like when the London cabbies kept making the exam to become a cabbie harder and harder till it was way way harder than anything they’d had to do to become a hack.
Then Uber came along.
See, this is the problem with leaving the teaching of the young to the old. It sounds like the most logical, sensible thing in the world, but there are serious pitfalls with asking old people to take young people they already feel threatened by and then, by teaching them, make them seem like even more of a threat.
The truth is, a lot of old experts deep down don’t want young people entering their trade and competing with them. That might cut in their own pay, after all.
Not that I think my new professor is doing that, at least not intentionally. This is the sort of thing that creeps into teaching unconsciously.
But we can never forget that deep vein of corruption that makes the old turn on the young and give in to the urge to punish them for daring to be happy and full of hope.
Happens in families too.
And there are few things in this world uglier than a parent who is so emotionally immature themselves that they are jealous of their own kids.
To me, that is what is obscene.
Don’t eat your young, people.
More after the break.
Memories of alienation
I’ve been out in the cold for so very, very long.
Part and parcel of retreating into ice cold intellectualism, I’m afraid. A flash frozen land of the mind which could offer world upon world of fascination, amusement, and diversion, but absolutely nothing in terms of warmth, affection, and connection.
Especially not connection. It might be my own little secret playground, but I am all alone in there and it’s not nearly as much fun without the other kids.
Ah, the other kids. Always my bete noir. Because of the conditions that led to my serious social retardation, including that pesky sky high IQ of mine that made it very hard for me to relate to them, I never learned how to make friends or get along so that I would fit in.
And I don’t want to fit in. Other people can “fit in” with me, thank you kindly.
And that’s the problem, innit? That non-negotiable inflexible individualism. That fast burning temper of mine that always surprises everyone when it suddenly flares up when I feel threatened.
Comes as a shock from a normally quite mellow and agreeable fellow like myself. And it certainly did me no favors on the playground.
Again I hearken back to my lack of kindergarten. I think I might have missed a vitally important developmental stage where I learned to negotiate the territory between my individual prerogatives and making friends.
But it’s more than that. The only word I can think of to describe what I missed and what remains missing in me is socialization. I never got that vital societal message that said it was okay to be around strangers because they won’t hurt you and might be your friend.
Because for me, that just wasn’t true. They did hurt me, and none of them wanted to be my friend or even have anything to do with me.
And that dashed any chance I had of learning to connect. To this day, I live in my very own Fortress of Solitude, and like Superman’s, mine was someplace very, very cold.
And now I don’t know what to do with myself. Just like in my childhood, I want to play with the other kids and be part of their bright, active, exciting world, but I’m just this weird little alien kid who lives on another planet entirely.
See you on the playground, Earthlings.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.