I have
Systems Analysis class tonight, and I’m dreading it. I enrolled in an
Information Systems graduate program to cull some of my boredom, but I find structured education grueling and largely unfulfilling. It’s difficult for me to pound out
HTML code all day and then go to class for two hours and have to participate in inane group discussions that do nothing to further my understanding of Systems Analysis methodologies.
Right now we’re covering Data Modeling, which I had a crash course in last summer in a Database Management class. E-R diagrams are a breeze, I understood them pretty quickly. Unary relationships are conceptually speaking a thing of great elegant beauty, a loop between entities that are the same but different. I get it. But watching my classmates stumble over the concepts for two hours just bores me. These are guys who like to use radar systems aboard Coast Guard cutters for in-class examples of Systems Analysis case studies. Yet they can’t think abstractly enough to grasp how foreign keys are used to create relationships in a database. I don’t mean to make sweeping generalizations about people, because I almost always get into trouble when I do, but government contractors are smart people who are too specialized for their own good. My classes are always filled with them -- they’re ubiquitous in D.C.
I’m trying to get motivated, but it’s just not working. I don’t want to sit and listen to government contractors argue with the professor, and I don’t want the guy in the Coast Guard uniform with all the ribbons to get up and suggest that we buy Visio at an educational discount. I don’t need to own a personal copy of Visio -- I just want to get through the requirements so I can take the ecommerce classes please.
My dad used to always say that I’m a quitter, so I’ve strived to complete everything I do just to prove him wrong (not that he knows, being dead and all). But there’s a part of me that just wants to drop out and enroll in a creative writing program. Sure, it won’t help my career, but at least it would be fun. Shouldn’t education be enjoyable? I like what I’m learning, but I just don’t have the patience to put up with the other students. I imagine this will be the same for any field I attempt.
((Yawn)). Two hours to go before class. It’s pretty sad when I’d rather be watching Enterprise than going to school -- I don’t even really like that show. But I’d rather watch Scott Bakula get captured by aliens than spend another minute listening to the old guy who works at the Commerce Department brag about himself for fifteen minutes of class time.