So part of the reason things have been spotty this week for me, aside from the hours being eaten by yet another MMO, is the fact that I was away from my job to go to training.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, by trade I am fortunate enough to have landed a job which plays to my terribly obsessive geek nature. I work in IT and this week I was sent to a training session to fill gaps in my knowledge.
I do have to say, there are some interesting social archetypes that happen to be at geek training sessions. For one thing, the instructor. Somehow having overcome the stereotypical geek fear of speaking in public outside of a message board, the instructor for a technology class is always an interesting personality. Sure, they might jump around worse than a bunny on steroids and the sense of humor they exhibit is enough to drive you to alcoholism, but aside from that, they tend to be knowledgeable people. Usually older, which means they were dealing with the nuances of geek before it started to actually be mildly cool, an instructor for any training class will have at least one credential that makes them “outstanding” (my instructor’s was that he wrote almost all of a certification test for Cisco). And they’d of course have other credentials, such as being able to skip the tech support queue for their service provider, building their own cabling standard, or actually getting someone to marry them. It gives you hope for the future, that’s for sure.
Then there are the students. If you miss the days of high school and college where you’d get the usual types of people, then you’re in for a treat in a training class. The only difference is that the wonderful stereotypes you have come to now and love have morphed into adult versions of themselves. There’s the old-school guy who’s cutting a paycheck until he retires, the evolution of the quiet kid in class. There’s the guy dressed in the latest trends who doesn’t particularly have a clue about the subject matter but just wants to be “cool” and get a cert, the misguided, yet more technically savvy Jock. There’s obviously the people in the class who know the answer to every question and who thus spend every waking moment pointing out the ineptitude of your ability to learn, changed from high school’s egghead. And of course, there is the unbelieveably attractive person who gets an overwhelming amount of help while you struggle to get a question answered or a partner to help, and that’s…well, people that are Hot never really change, I’m sure.
So you see, geek training is a way for average folks like you and me to re-live the glory days of school, without the continuous stuffing into lockers or toilets, but with teh same kind of awkward behavior you get by taking a bunch of tech-savvy people and putting them outside their cubicles. Savor the experence when you get it – and if you don’t – at least you should be getting wireless access in class.