Back to Square one

My walk has a cadence and intensity when I’m frustrated. Inside a 100-year-old stairwell, the sound produced is amplified. So when I walked into my daughter’s room and reached for my home lab router for the up-teenth time, she didn’t even have to look up from her screen.

“Another factory reset for the router?”

Yup, I was back…for the 4th time that day. Bent paperclip in hand, I could find the reset hole without looking. How could I end up here? I just earned my CompTIA Network+ certification, yet I was once again starting from square one with the configuration. With a fresh install of OpenWRT on my old TP-Link router, I assumed I knew what I was doing. After three months of full time studying for the exam, I knew the nomenclature, I knew the concepts, and I knew what I wanted. The problem was, the Gods and Goddesses of Ones and Zeros (Gooaz?) were not going to let me be the newbie exception.

I wish I could tell you this is where I applied my understanding of the difference between knowledge and application. Where I took to action the lessons I learned as a combat aviator in the Air Force after teaching hundreds of instructors and evaluators a simplified version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Teaching them that all students must progress from knowledge to concept before arriving at application and theorizing. To instruct within that flow and how to help students trying to bypass a step. It’s a simple concept to understand:

BOOK KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT EQUAL OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY

It isn’t theory; it is a fact reinforced by watching and teaching thousands of students over the years. Yet here I was, trying to skip steps.

I fully admit, I was cocky. I would make more than one configuration change at a time, maybe test changes every few saves. I wasn’t slowing down to document what I was doing. I was coming up with my own theories on why something wasn’t working without an ounce of research. I obviously knew what I was doing, I’m fresh off the exam and, I was getting one hell of a workout going up and down those stairs.

What I wanted was simple: 3 VLANs (servers, main, admin/rescue), an isolated 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network for all IoT devices, the 5.0 GHz wi-fi to connect to the main VLAN, and all being able to reach the internet. Easy enough, this time I will just change….

Luckily, this is where my prior training and experience finally overcame my youthful excitement; pause, breathe, observe, process, and don’t move forward in the same direction that got you into this in the first place.

I had to accept a couple of things. First, while I had achieved a high level of mastery in my previous career, I was now starting at square one; I hadn’t earned the deep understanding required to be proficient at theorizing. Second, I had to guide myself, just as I had guided countless others through a career transition, without falling into the many traps along the way.

I had seen those traps in others when I took a keen interest in observing those going through a career transition. We called them cross-trainees, just like me now; they had achieved a level of mastery in their previous career field and were now starting over from scratch. There was one pattern that I noticed early on, and then observed at an operational level, which now has profound implications for me.

Those cross-trainees who understood they were in square one, who put in the time not only studying but getting hands-on experience outside the normal syllabus, those who put pride aside and replaced it with curiosity, those individuals not only excelled but were leaps and bounds ahead of their cross-trainee peers who succumbed to pride and ego. In later assignments, I would see them continue to excel, often achieving a level of mastery similar to their former expertise, within a year. This is who I want to be, this is who I need to be.

This is my journey as I try to live my own lessons, as I start at square one. Yes, I hold A+, Network+, Security+, and ITIL v4 certifications, with more on the way. However, while I understand the theory and concepts, I lack operational application experience. There is only one way to get there, and it involves triumphs and failures with ups and downs. After flying low in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’m ready for this next ride.

The technical projects that will be part of this journey will be on the [[www.cyberchug.com/projects|projects]] page. For those starting off at square one like me, hop over to https://www.cyberchug.com/OpenWRT_SetUp/ to see the fruits of my OpenWRT adventures.