I've set some goals for myself regarding my IT future and I am really wanting to get exposed to more things. Right now I am a intern/sole IT person for a senior home and I'm ok at AD, slowly poking my way around Exchange, keeping an eye out on connections etc but I don't know things as well as I would like. I don't except to have professional level understanding right now but I don't think that I'm at a level where I should be. I really do not want to be doing help desk level stuff for my whole life. Right now I would really like to learn more about Exchange as there have been some situations where I've had to stumble my way through and hope I don't screw anything up. Are there any good (free?) resources out there that I can maybe start learning more about Exchange? I don't really need to know so much as to how to set it up, but rather play a maintenance roll. The way I'm setting myself up to learn is that I learn the broad basics to keep things going and then learn more advanced stuff as time passes.I hope that when I'm out of school, whenever that maybe I will have enough hands on experience that I can handle most task without the look of WTF on my face but also be able to use my knowledge combined with my experience that I could do advanced stuff. It's better than where I kind of currently sit with plenty of book/lab but not a ton of real world. __________________
Sounds like you're taking the right steps. Alternate ideas might include hanging around tech support forums, and trying to answer the questions and problems you see posted/reading answers. If you can set up a lab environment with a server that would be even better. Best way to learn is to do it, and immerse yourself in it.
www.vtc.com isn't free, but is very cheap. Buy a month, watch the training videos for a month, and cancel your sub. They aren't extremely in depth, but as with taking local class's in school, you should pick up on some stuff that you've overlooked in your daily work. Sometimes you pick up that one little trick that or that one tiny kernel of knowledge that just makes everything click for you. Answering forums as ModMinded said is another great way to learn how to fix things when they went wrong/bad. It also is a great way to learn where to look for help and answers. But as ModMinded said, if you can get a couple boxes to use for testing; that will be the biggest boon. There's no learning like breaking something and fixing it. I wouldn't know half the stuff i know now about NT if i didn't get a clean install ghost image and just try breaking it and tweaking it till it broke for several months. The only other free thing i would try would be to try to go to some staffing companies, and tell them you want either part time or an intern position where you can spend time in the environment.
