Certificate or Bachelors...

لطالما منحت الجنون قيمة مقدسة شعرية وقيمة صوفية. بدا لي أنه إنكار للحياة العادية ، ومحاولة لتجاوزها ، والتوسع ،والذهاب إلى ما هو أبعد من حدود الحالة البشرية

Cisco Certified Network Associate

Two interesting things happened during my time at the University of Illinois in Champaign. I learned Arabic, and I enrolled in a Cisco CCNA class at Parkland Community College. I took the CCNA back in 2000 as an elective course, and it was worth more than all 4 years at the University of Illinois. Until this day, I'm still using my CCNA skills. The basics don't change. I used those skills to get my first technical job and feed my family. My bachelors degree in computer engineering was all theoretical with little practical applications unless you worked at Intel or AMD. I often wonder if this was the result of computer engineering being in it's infancy in the 90's, but computers had been around since the 60's, and the world had already been going through a computer revolution. So I'm unsure why 4 year institutions were lacking in there ability to teach a full view of computer science. I mean a good introduction to computer engineering would have been just to explain something basic, like the Internet or just explain AOL Dail-up. Personally, I think that if a college teaches courses about computers then it should be a prequisite for that college to teach the history and development of computers and how the college's curriclulm relates to current trends in industry. This will allow students to see the evolution of the field and where their ideas and talents fit in. The way the University of Illinois taught computer engineering, they focused only on the physical architecture such as CPU, RAM, Memory and the building blocks. But knowing how to build computers is only part of the equation. You have to know languages, protocols, application interfaces and computer architecture to see the big picture. You have to bring all the many sub areas into focus in order to start building application/tools. I say all this to say that Cisco brought all of the sub areas of computer technology together for me, and helped me see what computer engineering was all about. But when I get overloaded with technology, I usually relax with some Arabic TV. One of my most memorable experiences at college was meeting my best and life long friend Mohammed Mohammed who inadvertenly introduced me to Arabic. We were studying for final exams one semester and he needed to take a two hour break and I was like, "I need to tag along with you wherever your going because we need to finish a lot of studying." So he said, "Ok". And that was the first day I entered a Masjid and it was the first day I had ever heard the Arabic language being spoken. It was like singing. It was strange. It was beautiful, and I've been learning and studying, Arabic since 2000. Every kid should learn how to speak a foreign language. Learning a language teaches you how to reprogram the mind. Initially, I thought it would take one or two years to learn Arabic, not realizing, I chose one of the most difficult languages behind Mandarin. That's funny because it actually took me about 10 years to become proficient and fluid. And that was just to learn formal Arabic. Meaning, I can read most books, newspapers, and magazines. But it took another two or three additional years to learn colloquial arabic so I could communicate with native speakers in everyday language. Conversational Arabic and formal Arabic are completely different, with different grammar rules and different pronunciation. And it gets even more complicated if you want to talk to somebody from different countries like Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Emirates, because each country has it's own dialect. So learning Arabic has been a life long hobby that's taken me around the world, and if you ever get the chance, check out one of my favorite Arabic morning shows "صباح الخير يا عرب". If you're a fan of Today, or Good Morning America you'll like it, and get some good middle-eastern recipes as well.

Certificate or Bachelors...

Cisco Certified Network Associate

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