Is it possible for me? Or am I just dreaming?

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I'll try to keep this short as short as possible.

I'm approaching 28, mostly only retail experience, now a night hotel manager (title is nothing, paid next to minimum wage), and have zero IT experience outside the most very basic use of a computer at work.

No degree, no formal qualifications, etc.

Have always been interested in IT but never put the effort into learning. Not kidding when I say I've been the laziest bum imaginable. Left school at 15, benefits claims until way into my 24th useless year on this earth, first job at 25 (part time supermarket), then got night manager job from just after turning 27 (currently been in 9 months).

I don't know if other bums grow out of it, but for me, in the past few months have suddenly felt real drive and a desire to work towards something big and get somewhere in life after being sickened by my situation and wasted years. It's a burning passion, but gets easily fizzled out by what you can imagine is extremely poor confidence and complete cynicism from my awful life choices thus far.

Can't say 100% what I'd like to do in IT. It's mostly all interested me and I've always wanted to know a lot about everything, and be one of these people who doesn't need to Google solutions all the time. I believe Networking interests me most, and for instance, we finally got WiFi at the hotel the other day, but before it was installed, we got delivered a box of Cisco access points pre-configured, etc, and I would just love to know how it all works and to maybe do it for a living. In addition, I've wanted to know purely for self use and to build a killer home network with everything shared securely within my home, between all my modern devices.

From what little I've read, I realise the start mostly everyone must make is first line support.

I'm not going to lie, a part of my motivation is obviously the prospect of earning more money, too. Now I'm sure some will get the idea from reading that, that I want to be a millionaire. Not at all. I just don't want to be earning next to minimum wage and scraping the barrel all my life.

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to explain everything fully, and would love some advice, or to know I'm wasting my time if so, what with all the stiff competition.

Thanks in advance for any information provided, and for reading!

 

I can relate to you bigtime.. although I have always worked but have never enjoyed it.. I was going to go down the support route of IT but realised this wasn't what I really wanted to do and I would be wasting my time as even if I got a job in IT support I would be sick of it in no time. So im going with something I personally enjoy and thats web and app development.. My advice would be to make sure you are 100% committed to what it is that you want to do and do all your research. I got a real sense of self-discovery from just coming onto these forums, I realised the only reason I wanted an IT support job was because I assumed it was an easy cosy job where you sit in a warm office playing on the computer all day as I have a knack for looking for the easiest way out, so please just make sure you really want it.

All the best.

 

Hey guys. Thanks for the replies. Sorry it took me so long to reply. Been busy settling in to my new place.

Jk2447 - thanks for the inspiring and motivating words. I have decided I'm going to give this a go and keep my progress updated here while I do so. I know it sounds like dieting and starting on Monday, but I'm gonna leave it until Christmas is over, since in my family it's a busy affair and on top of working full time, it just seems like it would be easier to wait a solitary month more and then make it my resolution (one that gets kept), and work will die down too then, so I should be able to do a little reading there, too.

Juelz - thanks for the reply, too. Why have you decided a help desk position won't be for you? Isn't it the only starting place to get your foot in the door with IT?

 

Hi,

I can relate to this quite well, and I do believe as jk said, asking the question is taking the first step! So well done... However, from here on in things will get tough and there will be a few knock backs.

We all have a story and a best way to get to the end goal, I would also say there is no right or wrong answer. My advice to you would be to take a look at alot of other peoples experiences, and learn from their mistakes before doing them yourself, essentially thats how I got into a network engineer job today.

Having alot of enthusiasm will help, the step for you now would be to get some certification and studying done. As said above, a good place to start would be N+ (if you want to move into networking) and maybe A+ simply because it gives you a good grounding on how endpoints work, this is always useful.

Once you have completed this; its time to decide where you actually want to go in your career... The next certs you do will be more specific to the job you are aiming to get, if you do want to give networking a go, I would look at doing the CCENT exam (its the intorduction to networking, from a real world perspective, Cisco's).

The great thing about this forum specifically is the focus around self studying, this is very cheap and often people will help you would with old books etc...

If you want to know anything more about getting on the networking ladder drop me an email I'm sure I can be of help!

Regards,
Brad.

 

Hey Brad.

Thank you very much for the response. It was very helpful and I very much appreciate it. Yeah I'm expecting an impossible time to follow, but that's the fun stuff, I guess. The things you look back on and laugh about in years to come. I can't wait to begin this journey, and as soon as the madness of Christmas is over, I shall delve into this Meyers A+ book I have. I hope this is a good book.

thanks for the offer of help, too. I'm sure I'll need it in future. You have my gratitude.

And very nice list of certs by the way.

Cheers