Last week I finished my last assignment for my last prerequisite course (we have four courses that have to make up 10 of our first 16 units). I enjoyed working with my classmates, appreciated the course content and feedback from my professor, and I got to do some interesting research.
Still, it was not my “cuppa,” and I’m glad to be done with it. (Of those first four classes, only one of them focused on what I would consider “my lane.” The rest were interesting and important, but kind of a slog.)
My next couple of semesters will be heavy on technology (yay!), light on group work (also yay!), and will include some marketing (we’ll see how that goes). I’m really looking forward to the next seven months.
This summer: MySQL. I worked with (Sybase) databases for many years as a user, and while I got very good at working within the confines of the existing interface, I never learned enough SQL to actually be able to work with the data outside of those proscribed activities. (These were amazing relational databases — elegant and thoughtfully designed — a testament to the positive impact of effective design thinking. In later years, they got kind of kludgy, but so did the organization’s thinking about the service, so … 🤷🏻♀️) I missed out by not learning SQL and diving into the guts of it. I could have learned a lot from that database and its developers.
It kind of reminds me of 4-year-old me. I don’t have many memories from early childhood, but I distinctly remember feeling like reading and writing was an adult conspiracy. I was just sure that meaningful information was being actively withheld from me, and if I could learn to read and write, I could unlock the mysteries of the world. Or at least my 4-year-old conception of the world.
SQL has become a later life version of that adult conspiracy for me. So this summer, I’m going to start figuring it out (for credit… it’s homework).
Let’s go!
Carmen Yount 