Probationary

Ninety days.

Three months to determine if I am a right fit for this position. Today finished my first week at my first job in tech. Each day I shadowed the senior DBA and watched as they wove together queries and joined and altered and if begin and end and… and…

I remember when we first covered databases in bootcamp. I was so excited. “It’s like Excel, with extra steps,” I beamed. In group projects I always volunteered to set up our databases and was usually in charge of any scaffolding we had to do. One recruiter asked about my hobbies. Photography. Recording music. Writing. They laughed. “Are you sure you’re not a front-end guy? You sound like a front-end guy.”

Yet here I sit to play among the tables. Some day. But not today. Turns out SQL is Excel with extra, extra, steps. I felt fairly-well prepared by bootcamp. I knew my crud functions. I knew my UPDATE and DROP and INSERT INTO. But this week I was quite humbled. If bootcamp introduced me to cooking and taught me how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, I’ve just been hired to train as a sous chef in a busy kitchen.

Which is not to say bootcamp didn’t prepare me, or that I foisted myself upon them with false promises. This employer knew my skillset and has hired fresh grads from this specific bootcamp before. And, after this first week, I’m all the more grateful to them for being willing to invest the time and money necessary to train someone up.

Eighty-five more days. I’ve got my requisite 900 page book on SQL server administration that I’m four chapters into. Drier than a slice of bread topped with salt and that desiccate packet that’s in the bottom of your junk drawer. Seriously, why is that thing in there? What are you going to use it for? I’ve got my bookmarks to the documentation and to tutorials. I’ve got a study plan and a notebook. And I’ve got eighty-five more days to prove to this company that they didn’t make the wrong decision.

I’m nervous. But, I hope, the right amount of nervous. Nervous enough to keep me motivated. Scared not of failure, but of the implications of searching for another entry level job after clearly failing out of the first one and in this climate to boot.

It’ll be a busy eighty-five days. It was a busy 25 days of job searching and networking after bootcamp. It was a busy 75 days of bootcamp. But it will be worth it, to have started a new career in such a short amount of time. Maybe my perspective on this journey will help others. Maybe it will be a nice memory to look back on some years from now. Maybe it will prove an excellent distraction as we careen towards the most important election in our lifetimes.

Ahem.

What was I saying?

Oh, yes.

Eighty-four days.