It’s not far off 5 months since I started my first job out of university. It’s not my first job working in the real world, I did the work placement in school year 10 (14/15 years old). In 6th form I did a small placement in preference to extra activities classes. Half of my summer holiday between first and second years at university was in the middle east doing IT work. Then of course there was the year in industry as part of my degree.

That doesn’t mean that the first 5 months of my new job have been easy. I’ve made mistakes, some from lack of experience, some from tiredness (there was a period when I worked 6 days a week not long after I first started) and some mistakes from just not knowing the systems that are in place. But gradually I’m getting there. It doesn’t help that the number of people in the IT department has gone from 5 to 3, and 2 out of that 3 are new to the company with the person who designed and wrote most of the system no longer employed here.

However I’m now at the point where my boss let me have the keys to one off our offices over the weekend so that I could do some essential out of hours work. Yesterday I felt sufficiently confident of my knowledge of the system and database to be able to reset some data so that it could be reprocessed today – but not before making a backup of the database

So what have I learnt. Well I now have a much better practical understanding of phone systems, a better idea of MS SQL (the administration of), DFS (Distributed File Systems) and WSUS (windows updates for companies) is now something that I’ve implemented and/or supported. And that some times it’s better to let your boss have his way when you know you are in the right (they don’t teach stuff like that at university ).

I’m now well and truly at the university of life.