October 20th, 2004
jimbojones
 | 02:26 pm - hot damn, good news The only thing that was still worrying me about my college application was that all credentials needed to be on the registrar's desk no later than noon, Jan 7th, the college board doesn't want to give me the results from my old SATs, and the nearest test date was Dec 4th - very tight timing. But the registrar's desk replied to my worried email today and told me that SAT's aren't actually REQUIRED for prospective students over 25... just high school transcript.
WHEW.
I'm still a LITTLE nervous, though, because my high school grades frankly sucked ass. I, uh, didn't exactly live a happy life back then, and my random assortment of high A's and low F's in equal proportion, with a smattering of less extreme grades strewn throughout the rest, don't look so great on a transcript; my SAT scores (which were outstanding) were always supposed to be my ace in the hole to get me past that. But hopefully they aren't going to care much about the transcripts, either, beyond verifying "yes this jackass did in fact graduate from a high school at some point, therefore we will accept his tuition money."
Financial aid is another story, of course, and that's why I'm still planning on retaking the SAT's in December.
... at the local high school. SIGH. Won't that be a joy. Oh well. Current Mood: all over the place Current Music: Everclear - Everything to Everyone
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Comments:
|  |  |  |  | Amusingly enough, I had to declare a major on my freshman application. Ha.
I haven't even studied the course catalog, to be perfectly honest with you. But I picked "Computer Science" out of the list of majors offered, since I had to pick one for purposes of the application. My mom has been telling me I should seriously think about getting into GIS (Geographical Information Systems), as that's a more and more desperately needed field that hasn't yet been invaded by legions of know-nothings armed with pieces of paper and expectations of getting paid without having to actually know anything, like the general IT field has. From what I've seen of it, it's also still got lots of room for improvement in its tools, and an open enough mindset to accept improvements if somebody makes them. Mmmmm, complex relational databases and willingness to accept change if it works... definitely something I'm considering heavily.
It was REALLY refreshing looking at the job listings at the GIS job clearinghouse website and not only seeing how fucking MANY of them there were, in areas large and small, but also how little corporate bullshit there was to be dealt with in the listings themselves. From what mom and her folks tell me, and from the way it looks in the job listings, it's pretty much just "got the union card (college degree)? actually understand what we're doing? COME DO THIS FUCKING JOB, PLEASE!" in sharp contrast to the general IT world's current state of being choked to death with HR departments.
But I don't know, we'll see. The biggest thing motivating me right now, to be honest, is just a need to shake up my life. It's too small, and the bar scene doesn't really seem to be the way to fix it. I go out with friends every now and again, but I don't meet anybody that way; not in any meaningful way, at any rate. Maybe mixing it up in the college world will turn out to be better.
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|  |  |  |  | | From: biggeek Date: October 24th, 2004 - 12:33 am | |
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Re: Back to school
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Yeah, I hear that. While I definitely enjoyed the money, I valued the independence, responsibility, respect and challenges that came with Sysadmin work.
Nowadays you can remove money, independence and respect from that equation. IT work in the corporate world is now just another cost center to be minimized as much as possible.
The thing that really pushed me off of staying in IT was seeing 20/30 year veteran guru-level guys getting laid off...And struggling to get another gig at all over the past couple of years. They have the passion as well, and yet all of their experience has been devalued.
Looking at the trend, I couldn't see myself still being a Sysadmin in 10 years.
With hardware becoming such a cheap commodity, disk space becoming so cheap that users don't even bother to manage their files anymore...Disk quotas are becoming a memory...Users with gigabyte-sized mail files because they keep ever-fucking-thing...Network connectivity being considered a "free" resource akin to air...And so many companies don't even bother to consider their information infrastructure as something valuble because now it resides on a $10,000 file server and disk array instead of a $100,000 file server and disk array.
System Administration has become devalued as a result.
I'm ranting...Sorry. Leaving my Sysadmin career behind was a tough choice.
But the possibility of creating things...Real, tangible things...In a science/engineering career is a powerful draw. I doubt any of my efforts over my 10 year IT career survive to this day.
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|  |  |  |  | I don't think it's going to be an issue; the registrar's desk said that all they were looking for was a 2.0 GPA, and I'm pretty certain I should at least have that. My ... typical report card was generally something along the lines of an A, two B's, a C or two, and a D or an F, even at my worst.
Portrait Of A Troubled Teen, but unless my math fails me, "2 point oh" shouldn't be difficult at all to squeeze out of that.
Also, they WILL accept 1988 SAT's, and it turns out that yes, my high school DID keep my old SAT scores as well as my transcript, and USC will accept SAT results sent in from a high school. So I don't anticipate any difficulties.
Now I just have to see what I can squeeze out of the system for financial aid...
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