The Impact Having a Baby Had On Studying

While I was on my paternity leave, I set a lofty goal for myself of studying for 8 hours a day, every day, and getting the absolute most out of the time off work to push myself further towards the goal of getting my CompTIA A+ certification and my first entry level IT position. In reality, I got a single chapter done in those two weeks. Having a baby is such an amazing experience that nothing I have ever experienced even comes close to. However, it proved to be a massive adjustment that honestly takes time. The combination of being a first time parent, and my lack of experience with babies, that adjustment period took a little longer than my paternity leave actually covered.

During this time, I found it extremely difficult to focus on new content in my book study and I ended up spending most of that time bonding with our child, learning how to care for a newborn, and slowed down on my book study considerably. As I’m sure many first time fathers can relate to, having a baby is a little nerve-racking. We were blessed with a very healthy baby, but the first few weeks were still scary. Even though nothing was ever wrong, between checking on her, caring for her, bonding with her as much as possible in her waking moments, and also spending time with our other kids, it was impossible for me to get a solid study routine figured out right away. As it turns out, it’s a little difficult to learn IT while learning how to care for a baby.

Instead of focusing on new content, aside from Chapter 10 which focused on various peripherals and their connectors, I spent time restructuring my Obsidian vault. When I first started my note-taking, I created folders for each of the certifications I plan on getting for the first phase of my IT career, these being the A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications, or the Trifecta as it is often referred to. My book study notes were housed in that A+ folder that I created. I quickly realized that there would be heavy overlap between the A+ certification, any future certifications, and any personal projects that I choose to take on. Instead of treating each certification as a self contained notebook, I made the adjustment of breaking everything down into small categories with notes that will be expanded on as I pursue further certifications and learn on the job. I then went through the official exam objectives outlined by CompTIA, and rewrote them in my notes, linking to any notes that I have created on those topics thus far. This proved to be very time consuming (thankfully I decided to do this now rather than later), but was much easier to focus on while adjusting to life with a newborn. It also had the added benefit of being able to get a good visual of my current progress, and will be very helpful when it comes time to review.

It was during this time that I actually landed my first interview for a help desk position. While I don’t know what the outcome will be, it was really great to have the opportunity not only to get that first interview, but to chat with people as enthusiastic about tech as I am.

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Post-Adjustment Progress

After my paternity leave was up and I returned to work, I was able to buckle down and push through more content in the book. This time, I was able to complete Chapter 11 which focused on operating system installation, but also touched on the different editions of Windows and their features…which ultimately pushed me to purchase a Pro license of Windows 11 to get the full feature set that I could mess around with on my personal system. A lot of this was review, as I’ve been installing and upgrading operating systems since I was in elementary school. But the textbook’s coverage of troubleshooting OS installation issues was all new to me, and is useful to know.

I then moved on to Chapter 12 which covered various Control Panel applets, Windows Tools, and Settings menus for configuring. This section was fairly dense, and took a considerable amount of time to get through. This was mostly to do with the Settings app layout changing a lot since the book was printed…in March of this year. I opted to create my notes on the way that the Settings app is currently laid out, just to have the most up-to-date information in my notes. I don’t imagine that the A+ exam tests on actual setting locations, rather it should test on setting functions. I hope that I am correct in that assumption. The most interesting section covered in this was the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). Before reading this chapter, I knew that some utilities came as standard executables, and that others came in an .msc format, but I never knew why and never had any reason to look into it before. I had no idea that those .msc files were snap-ins that could be grouped together into a single window. I also had no idea that Computer Management existed as a pre-configured group of the most frequently used snap-ins for managing a PC. I also had no idea just how many of these snap-ins existed.

Chapter 13 went even deeper into configuration with a dive into users, groups, NTFS permissions, and group policies and also covered some basic security concepts like authentication, authorization, and encryption. It was at this point I decided that upgrading to a Pro license of Windows 11 would be very beneficial. From having access to the full set of administrative tools, drive encryption, RDP support without workarounds, and the ability to experiment with Hyper-V in the future, the upgrade made perfect sense. At the end, it touched on the chown and chmod commands for managing permissions and ownership on Linux and macOS. I spun up an Ubuntu virtual machine in VMWare to mess around in as more Linux material gets introduced.

I then started Chapter 14 which covers maintaining and optimizing operating systems. At this point, I am just shy of halfway to being finished with the book, jumping from 30% at the time of my last post to 45% (based on page count).

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Looking Forward

I purchased my exam vouchers and plan on scheduling core 1 for December and core 2 for January. I think this will give me plenty of time to finish my book study and leave about a month of review before each of the exams. I also went ahead and purchased the Network+ and Security+ books by Mike Meyers as well, and may pick up the Linux+ book for fun. Once I get my A+ certification, I intend on diving right in to the next 2 certs. I also intend on continuing blogging on a more frequent basis. In the time I had available to me over the past few weeks, I had to choose between writing a blog post and pushing on through studying, and studying seemed like the smart choice.

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Still determined — One cert at a time!