I have been through the Academy once before and I know what I am in for. I will be "Cisco Networking Academy busy." If you have never been through a Cisco Networking Academy you should know that you are expected to do at least ten hours of homework in addition to the seven hours of class work. Trying to fit all that in at night and during the weekends into a schedule where you work full time during the day is very demanding. I remember going through the Academy the first time and being in shock. I had completed my Network+ certification so not all of the concepts or vocabulary was foreign to me, but the Cisco "way of doing things" was. Cisco relies heavily on the command line in order to configure their equipment. The command line looks like a Linux or a DOS command prompt where you have to memorize and type in all your commands, no menus or icons. Recently they have added a GUI to help with that configuration. It is supposed to make it easier but now you have to know both the GUI and the command line. They have dropped some commands and protocols but have added new commands and more material about wireless and security. Some of the academy material will be a review for me but much of it will be new. That is why I am doing it again, things have changed.
What I learned from the Cisco Networking Academy experience the first time wasn't all technical. I learned that you need to ask for help from your neighbors and be willing to help out too. The first couple of weeks everyone was pretty silent. Many of us were under the false impression that we could do it on our own. We didn't like it when we heard that we would have to share the equipment and work in teams. When I started there were four sections of sixty people each in the first quarter of the program. By the end of the year during the fourth quarter there were maybe sixty of us divided into two sections and only about twenty of us went to the graduation. The people who "survived" were the ones who worked very hard and worked well in groups. The final required us to configure a small lab network with a few computers, switches and routers. The final was timed and that network either worked or it didn't, basically pass or fail. No one in any of the groups did it all by themselves while the others watched. It was a true team effort. We learned to work as a team during the year by sharing equipment while working through the chapter exercises and projects.
I have promised myself that I will do things a little bit differently this time around. Yes, some of those promises to myself will be to work harder and not get behind. The other promise though is to be a little more social in the beginning of this class. I intend to get to know the people around me a little quicker. I also will ask for help sooner from the teacher and other students. I hope that I can start working with people in groups faster and better but at the same time not seem like I am running for class president. It is kind of ironic that in order to be successful at networking computers you also need to be successful at networking with people. In the end working with computers means working with people. Whether you are responding to a user with a problem or working with a coworker to solve that problem it all comes back to working with people first and then working with the technology.
Besides being a little more social I hope that I can use two new tools that I have been experimenting with on my own. I hope that I can use this blog and Google+ to reach out to people. I like the way that Google+ has Circles. Communicating through e-mail in a group was frustrating. It would be better to put everyone in a Circle and just post to that Circle once and not have to do the "copy everyone dance" with e-mail. It was also common for us to change groups based on projects and circumstances. Being able to put people in multiple Circles based on projects would be better than having to sort through all that e-mail. I am also looking forward to using this blog to communicate what I will be doing at the academy instead of being silent like I was those first weeks of class. By posting what I am going through in class other people might be helped or they can post comments that can help me. I still plan to post about things other than Cisco but I will definitely be "Cisco Networking Academy."
