The Mattastical World of Matt, sponsored by Cisco: Tomorrow Starts Here! (Not really)
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I ended my last Computer Engineering post with a cliffhanger, if you want to call it that. I feel like I could have gone the route of the Avengers and let this cliffhanger sink in for an entire year, clawing away at your psyche, demanding some form of closure. Ok, maybe not that crazy. This isn’t my most popular series after all.
Anyways, I decided I would be nicer to my audience and not leave them in suspense for that long. Besides, I’m way too impatient to wait that long to continue my stories. So here we are at part 2, I still have more to say about that class.
In my last Computer Engineering post, I ended off mentioning me and my classmates setting a computer on fire. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. There weren’t violent flames coming out of the case or anything like that. We didn’t need to evacuate the school and call the fire department for that (but when there were burnt tater tots…). It was more of just smoke that was seconds away from possibly maybe turning into a fire.
We were building this computer one day in the classroom. We had just put in the motherboard and were plugging in the wires from the power supply. Unfortunately, we didn’t put all the cables in the right places.
As much as everyone is dying for me to go into a technical lecture on what exactly happened, I’m gonna keep this simple. You see in a motherboard, most of the slots are meant to take in power from the power supply connections and power other components (that’s too many powers for one sentence). Most, not all. There is one slot that sends power through the connection and is meant to be used with a separate cable. But it looks so similar to the other slots and we were just teenagers plugging wires into some green board. We were essentially colliding electric currents with each other, which apparently equals bad stuff. Alright, enough technical jargon.
I remember looking inside the open computer case where everyone was working, walking away for a second, then turning my head back at the sound of everyone screaming. There was a single smoke strand rising up to the ceiling. People were rushing to unplug the computer. Needless to say our teacher was not impressed that day.
The scary part was that it wasn’t one or two students, it was a large group of us. Not just that, a mix of sophomore, juniors, and a couple seniors. These are the people that will be fixing your desktops in the future! But it’s okay, we’re Cisco certified!
I forgot to mention that in the last post. In all the shops at my high school, your main goal was to get a certification. I guess the point of having them was to show potential employers your qualifications for the job. I would love to be in the decision room for that. “Well I was going to hire this 47 year old man with 20 years of experience with computers, but then this Matthew guy told me he was Cisco certified. Hmmmm…”
In the Computer Engineering Shop, you worked towards two different certifications: CompTIA A+ (the hardware and software one) and CCNA (the networking one). Each one took two tests to get the certification. The amount of cramming we had to do for these certification tests was insane. From our online textbooks, one test was anywhere from 10-16 chapters of content. There were so many numbers and jargon words to memorize and understand.
Our computers in the classroom had tons of customizable practice tests on them. We had to do so many of those practice tests to the point where we would recognize some of the questions that would repeatedly pop up. Still not as bad as those textbooks tests though.
Then there was the whole certification testing process. Oh geez, it was so long and so frustrating. First, you had to tell the teacher when you felt ready to take the test and he would schedule an appointment at the testing center. They tell you to bring two forms of identification with you, cause a license with your name and picture wasn’t enough for these guys. “We need a license and a school ID. They are both equally crucial to verifying who you are!”
On the day of your scheduled certification test, you go to the testing center. For us, the testing center was some building on the Delaware State University campus (it was the closest one to our school). But this wasn’t just any building, this was like DSU’s hidden building. Have you ever watched in the Harry Potter movies those buildings that are invisible to the non-wizards? I’m pretty sure this was one of those buildings. Every time I went to take a certification test, I would always get lost. Didn’t matter that it was four times, I always struggled to find it. “It was right there last time.”
After about half an hour of trying to find the testing center, you’d go inside and wait for someone to sign you in. There was always that annoying CT television playing CNN in the waiting room that no one ever watched. Once someone comes out of the office to help you (which happens about once every fifteen minutes), they take your ID’s and validate your identity while you fill out all these forms. There’s a paper form to sign in, then you have to sign in on the virtual form, then there’s a form that makes you promise to follow the certification tests rules, and probably some other form I’m forgetting about.
Before you enter the testing center, they make you put your belongings in a locker. But they don’t let you take the key once they lock it, they’re the locker keepers. I’m not so sure how I felt about that. I go take a test for 90 minutes while this guy holds on to the key to all my possessions? (so that’s where all my 20’s went).
They take you to their testing center in the basement where they validate your identity AGAIN and make you sign in AGAIN. Then they take your picture for when you finish the test and get your results. So make sure your hair looks nice when taking a certification test, and make sure you wear a nice shirt.
Finally, they set up your test on a desktop and escort you to your seat. So you sit down, start the test right away, and I’m just kidding. The test itself makes you agree to THEIR terms and conditions, even though you already did that like five minutes ago.
After all of that, the certification test finally starts. It was usually somewhere between 55-80 questions. They were challenging, but never brutally bad. You only needed a certain score to pass, generally about 75-80%. Once you finished, they made you take a short survey on what your demographics are and how you heard of the test. It was always so suspenseful because it was the time gap between you taking the test and you receiving your score.
So you finally get your score for the test. You’re not done yet though. Now you need to sign out on paper and on a computer. Once you do that, they’ll print out your test results and escort you back to the waiting room. The guy gets his key, unlocks the locker, and lets you grab your phone and wallet, which is always lighter than when you came in.
And I had to do that four times! Thankfully, I never failed a certification test. So I only went to that place the minimum number of times I had to. Wasn’t that bad of an experience, just a longer process than it needed to be. Plus, it was pretty cool having those certifications. It was nice having more than just a diploma to show my efforts in high school. I felt like I really learned real world skills, networking concepts that may become necessary to know in the future.
And Even that doesn’t cover all of my Computer Engineering Stories. There are still so many more good times I had in that class. Guess that means I’m gonna have to make a part 3 someday. But until I do, stay Matt-astic!
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