Ten years ago this week I found myself in Las Vegas, not to enjoy its infamous nightlife or try my luck at the casinos, but to face what I would rank as one of the most challenging achievements of my life — maybe second only to earning my Master’s degree. I was in Vegas attending a grueling boot camp crash course to earn my Microsoft MCSE certification (server engineer). My mission? To conquer not one, not two, but seven MCSE exams in the span of just two weeks.
Our schedule was brutal. We spent up to 10 hours a day absorbing the intricacies of Microsoft technologies only to clock out and hit the books back in our hotel rooms for another 5 to 6 hours each night. This included weekends. I think in the span of fifteen days, my friends and I (Ellston and Lee) made it to a casino twice. To be honest, I’m not sure I could do it today; even then, ten years ago, I was tested. There were many nights I stopped studying at midnight and was downstairs at seven the next morning eating breakfast. I believe this was the trip I discovered Monster energy drinks.
While I was never against certifications, I have never felt that they were the end-all in regards to judging a person’s knowledge. Prior to earning my MCSE I had been working with servers (literally IN a server room!) for fifteen years. Certification was something I had never pursued… until our organization was assimilated and I was informed I would need to obtain this certification to remain in my position. After a decade and a half, someone who didn’t know me came along and demanded I needed a piece of paper to prove I could do the job I had been doing.
If their plan was to see me fail, they greatly underestimated the willpower and resilience of an O’Hara fueled by spite and a vendetta. Not even the nightly temptations of slot machines, scantily clad women, or gallon-sized margaritas could lure me away from those books. In our class of approximately twenty, about half made it to the finish line. I had always heard boot camps were the easy route to certification. Covering and being tested over 200-page manuals every two days may be some people’s idea of easy, but not mine. The test questions ranged from memorizing obscure minutia to working story problems in an adaptive test setting — meaning once you missed a question in a particular area, the test would then focus on that topic in an attempt to fail you.
Within a year of earning my MCSE, I changed departments. I guess I’ve watched one too many 80s movies, the ones where at the end when the good guy — having bested the bad guy in some competition or otherwise proving himself — is finally accepted. The two exchange a trophy, shake hands, or high five one another — usually the movie ends on a freeze frame of that moment. In real life, the bad guys just shrug and keep throwing more obstacles in your path. And another, and another. And eventually you realize there aren’t enough certifications in the world to prove yourself to some people. Eventually you learn it was never about the certification in the first place.
Aside from the taxing study schedule and stressful tests, my fondest memory of that week was hanging out and bonding with my coworkers Lee and Ellston. I had known Ellston for many years prior to that trip, but Lee and I were still trying to figure one another out and on that trip, when we realized we were the bizarro versions of one another from two different organizations, we finally clicked.
The long nights and the drama surrounding that time at work are all ancient history now, but the fun we had during that trip is what I remember best.
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