IT Gives You Options

It's Friday, there's mild chaos in a suddenly turbulent stock market, and a gigantic snowstorm is bearing down on the East Coast (from roughly Maryland to Maine) of the United States. Is everybody ready for the weekend? A favorite weekend pastime is going to the movies, which many people do to escape the sometimes persistent troubles and weighty responsibilities of reality.

This weekend, there are two big new movies. One is about a man who gets depressed and then very, very angry after common criminals kill his wife and gravely injure his daughter, so he sets out to find and kill the murderers himself. The other is about a Russian ballerina who breaks her leg and must become a ruthless killing and spying machine to ensure her sick mother's hospitalization.

So, OK, maybe it's not the best weekend to see a blockbuster movie and forget about how life is sometimes really hard. One important lesson we can learn from both of these movies, however — thankfully without going to see either of them — is that life is better when you have options. The first movie is Death Wish, starring Bruce Willis, and the second is Red Sparrow, starring Jennifer Lawrence.

In both movies, the main character feels that they have no other option than to pursue a tragic and violent course that serves no one's interests well — including their own. Sometimes we all feel boxed in, of course, but frustration is never a good excuse to just give up and pursue the most extreme course of action imaginable. And there are good antidotes to frustration.

Take your full-time job, for example. There are days when all of us wish that we could do something else than show up for the 9-to-5 dog-and-pony show. Most people don't think seriously, however, about up and quitting, and taking a different job somewhere else. Finding a job is hard. Or at least it's hard in most fields. That's one thing that makes working in IT so wonderful.

If you have solid IT skills, and at least a degree of interpersonal charm, then there will always be someplace else to look for work. Many job markets are shrinking, or vanishing altogether, but IT skills are in demand pretty much everywhere you look. And if you aren't sure what you want, well, that why TestOut Continuing Education's Library Suite is such a such an excellent resource.

The Library Suite gives you access to every course we offer. (Remember how we were saying that there are a lot of options in IT?) You can try a few different things and find the one that works for you. Maybe it's Linux. Or maybe you'd be better suited to a career in information security. Maybe you'll like learning about routers, switches, and networking. Or maybe Windows Server is your jam.

Don't subject yourself to a lifetime of frustration in a dead-end job that you can't leave because where else would you go? When you have IT skills, you have options. It's that simple. Even if you have, like Liam Neeson once said, a very particular set of (tech) skills, there will always be more than one employer eager to take you on. Get the Library Suite, get certified, and you'll always have options.