T-SQL Tuesday #150 – My First Technical Job

It’s time for T-SQL Tuesday. This month’s invite comes from Kenneth Fisher who asks to hear about our first technical job. Check out the full invite by clicking the T-SQL Tuesday image below:

The Long Magenta Line

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

My first technical job was working in CNS (Computer and Network Services) as a student worker at Muskingum College. I was lucky enough to start this job the summer before my freshman year at Muskingum. I went from graduating high school one week to starting a full time job the next.

Having three months to learn the campus and make some connections with others on campus made my first day of real classes much less stressful. There are few things worse than not knowing where you’re going but by the first day of class I knew Muskingum like the back of my hand.

Lift with Your Legs

The job had some stresses, too. During that first summer, I think there was more physical stress than mental stress.

One of the earliest tasks I remember working on was unboxing dozens (it may have been hundreds, it felt like it) of brand new flat panel monitors. Taking these new, fancy monitors out to install for staff and faculty was fun. Returning the outdated CRT monitors to our office and taking them down into the basement of the science center…not as much fun. Especially on the days when it was over 90 degrees with high humidity.

It wasn’t long before we had the same process with replacing computers, and so that became the big project for my college summers.

Over my four years there I replaced countless hard drives, motherboards, you name it. There was plenty of virus clean up, printer issues, and an ungodly amount of browser toolbars. All the types of problems you hear about when somebody approaches you with “you work with computers right? I have this issue…”

My time working in CNS was just as valuable as my time in class working towards a Computer Science degree. It helped me become more comfortable dealing with not only frustrated customers but also people in general.

So Where’s the T-SQL or DBA Part?

I could write all day about my time at Muskingum and in all of that time there would be very little about databases.

Being a database administrator wasn’t something I considered until years after college. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work my way up into a database administrator career. You could say I was right on the verge of what some would consider an “Accidental DBA.”

It’s cliché to say it but I know my life wouldn’t have evolved the way it has without the lessons learned in that first job.

Thanks for reading!