Make Your Own IT Origin Story

It seems like there are comic book movies and comic book superheroes everywhere you turn these days. Five of the six highest-grossing movies to play in theaters in 2018 were superhero movies. (Incredibles 2, technically speaking, has no antecedent in comic books, but is 100 percent in the spirit of its archetypally ink-spawned fellow feature films.) There's a Best Picture Oscar-nominated comic book superhero movie. There are two such films in the running for Best Animated Feature.

Every comic book superhero has layers of mythology describing where they came from and how they turned out the way that they did. There's even a phrase for it, two words that have become so familiar they are sometimes used pejoratively: origin story. "I'm excited about the new Batman movie, but I really hope it's not just another origin story." A superhero's origin story supplies two important details: It provides the hero with a purpose, a guiding rationale, and also gives him or her powers.

Wonder Woman is an Amazonian warrior princess, the peerless warrior spawn of a peerless warrior race. Iron Man is the pampered son of a brilliant inventor and uses his own genius-level intellect to create the ultimate crimefighting suit. Superman is a brother from another planet, sent to Earth as an infant, who gets his power from Earth's yellow sun. Spider-Man got his powers from a radioactive spider, and his mission in life from the teaching (and fateful demise) of his Uncle Ben.

You may not be able to lift a building, or punch a marauding supervillain into next week with a single mighty blow. IT workers, however, are highly important, and even heroic, in assuring the smooth function and ongoing development of our increasingly technology-dependent society. There's a critical need for workers with strong IT skills and deep IT knowledge, and you don't even have to wait around to get bitten by a spider with Boolean circuitry to join the ranks of modern IT superheroes.

All it takes is time, commitment, and excellent IT training and certification courseware — sometime we know a thing or two about around here. There may only be one Batman, but you don't have to be a billionaire playboy with rigorous martial arts training whose parents died in front of him when he was a boy to succeed in IT. All you need to do is apply your native intellect. So jump in! Your powers will activate as soon as you start learning.