An Epiphany

I had a revelation today.

I may actually know something.

It's really a very strange feeling. Usually, I am not confident about any of the random data stored in my head. Well, let me qualify that. I can be absolutely sure that the sky is blue, but the moment you challenge me on it, "Are you sure?", I'm suddenly very much not sure.

I can't stand being challenged. I'm terrified of it. So, usually, I'm not very confident about what I know, despite the reassurances I get from my darling husband sixteen times a day.

So today, I logged into my class newsgroup to see if anyone had posted anything new. This being a statistics class, and five out of five people are overwhelmed with the amount of vocabulary being thrown at us, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion between 10:00 last night and 9:00 this morning. However, one person did respond that he could not answer the discussion question that was due last night until someone clarified the question for him as he had asked on Sunday evening. Seeing nobody had responded to him yet, two days after he'd posted the initial clarification request, I took it upon myself to try and respond.

Really, all he needed to do was read the unit in the book that the instructor had assigned for the week. "The Coefficient of Variation divides the Standard Deviation by the mean." That was the sentence he wanted clarified. Really, it was just a vocabulary lesson. So, I summarized the first 55 pages of our 142 page unit into two pages of a post, defining the main vocabulary words in the statement under question and giving examples. I was really quite proud of myself. And explaining it to someone else certainly helped me to understand the concepts better.

I've always been a numbers person, so plugging numbers into an equation and doing the math isn't a problem for me. In fact, I thrive on it. However, all this vocabulary that names the equations is a bit overwhelming. I'll never remember that the Coefficient of Variation is (the square root of [the sum of {the square of (the mean of a group of numbers subtracted from each of those group of numbers)} divided by the number of numbers in the group]) divided by the mean. Well, maybe now I will because I've written it sixteen times today, but I won't remember what Chebychev's Theorem really is. (What IS Chebychev's Theorem, anyway?)

Anywho, so that was the start of my day. After that, I fixed some problems with code that had moved around too much and needed to be rewritten, and then I had a status meeting with my boss about a project we're working on to meet SAS-70 requirements. I asked a question, and I was told it couldn't be done because it was a security risk, and that the current process was better, but needed to be more secure. I didn't see the difference between the way I said it should be done (which eliminated several steps in the process) and the current process, as far as security goes. But the end result was, I was told my way was insecure.

Two hours later, my network administrator, who is working on this project with me, comes over to ask me how to write a program that does exactly what I had described to my boss earlier. When I told him that I was told my way was insecure, he told me that there was no difference between the security of the two processes, and that my way should be better because it actually eliminated a step that was insecure.

*score 1 for the ego boost*

Add to the fact that in casually looking at jobs online last night, I found I actually earn about half of what I should be making...

I think it's time to update my resume.

I might actually know a thing or three. Yay me!