Getting an IT Help Desk Job For Dummies

Chapter 18

Ten Things You Should Learn

In This Chapter

• Discovering new technologies and concepts
• Expanding your awareness of the importance of these technologies in today's world
• Pushing yourself to learn new things and keep yourself fresh and exciting

Education is one thing. Education helps you establish levels of expertise in the panoply of academic standards and your chosen major and minor disciplines and prepares you for working with people, meeting deadlines, and being generally responsible (acknowledging that college students also act irresponsibly). It's the self-education part that I'm interested in in this chapter.

There are great benefits to be derived from branching out from your planned collegiate or other core educational path. After all, degree courses give you a rather specific series of classes aimed at teaching you a skill or trade. Unfortunately, the job market sees technical people as all-in-one, jack-of-all-trade types, capable of performing an array of tasks. What is also unfortunate is that these expectations are not reasonable, but that doesn't stop them from having said expectations.

As a service to you, I've written this chapter to give you information on ten or so things that I think you should learn about. Don't worry if you are already taking courses for some. You can delve into the others. I'm sure that you'll find a number of these ideas compelling as I'm making them as interesting as I possibly can. They really are quite interesting.

Virtual Machine ...