Practice Makes Possible

There are some areas of professional endeavor where simply wantin' and strivin' aren't enough to bridge the yawning gap between aspiration and professional success. You could shoot 1,000 jump shots at the basket above the garage every day from first grade to high school graduation and still not ever play a minute of college basketball, let alone make it to the NBA. Especially if you don't happen to be taller than 5 feet 10 inches (or thereabouts), at a bare minimum.

Maybe you always wanted to be a famous actor as a kid. (Didn't we all, at one emotionally-charged movie-watching moment or another?) Suppose you had learned to memorize entire scripts and played a part in every school play and local theater production in a 50-mile radius of the neighborhood where you grew up. There would still be no guarantee of even getting your face in a detergent commercial, let alone seeing your name above the title on a movie poster.

Now, our point in offering these examples is not to pooh-pooh the power of dreams, or insist that everyone should resign themselves, on some mental or emotional level, to a life of joyless unexceptionality. Every person we've ever met was unique and interesting in some way or another. To say nothing of the fact that accidents of timing have a lot to do with the inordinate attention that accrues to some people who go through life with a particular expertise.

If you're a rock star in 2017, for example, then there's probably a degree of money and fame accessible to you that most people couldn't dream of. Even that rarefied status isn't as privileged today as it was 30 years ago, however, and peering farther back into the mists of time, there have been eras of world history when musicians, athletes, and entertainers were viewed as being among the lowest of the low. Ancient Rome, anyone?

What we're really here to tell you is that the information technology (IT) realm is one where tireless commitment and energetic practice actually can vault you to the top. You don't have to be unnaturally handsome or drop dead gorgeous to learn the ins and out of computer hardware and software. You don't need a stunning degree of athletic prowess, or a mad genius for catchy melodies and song lyrics, to become adept at cybersecurity.

With solid IT training of exactly the sort that TestOut Continuing Education is built around, anyone with a rigorous work ethic can go from neophyte to skilled and job-ready IT professional in a matter of months. And you'll probably find that there's a lot more demand on the open market for computer and IT skills than for other abilities that are perhaps more aspirational than concrete.

Put in the time to grow and develop your IT skills, and you can have a long career making a great income, typically with excellent benefits. You'll probably even have a fair amount of free time at night or on the weekends. You know, to work on your bat speed, or continue mapping out the plot of that novel you've always wanted to write. Just in case opportunity of a different sort comes your way.