Interns

My manager is a genius. He gave me an intern. The weird thing about being a DBA intern is that you start off knowing NOTHING about your job. DBA interns are usually Computer Science students or sometimes Information Systems students... and have, at most, had 1 class "about" databases. What are they taught in this class? Well they'll learn that a relational database is a collection of tables. They'll also learn the basics of SQL (select, insert, update, delete, alter, create)... enough to do the ultimate database example: the video rental store.

In my case, my intern hasn't even taken this class. But, does that matter? not really. Why? because as a DBA you don't really use the basics of SQL. In fact, for my projects that are in "sustaining mode," I've never done a SELECT against any of their tables (but for projects in active development... thats a completely different story).

Also, I've been "instructing" the intern class this summer. This year's interns seem... different. Last year everyone was extremely social, and we hung out with the young employees all the time. This years group seems to be much more clique-ish and less social as a whole. Of course, there are more than a couple exceptions... and they're definitely exceptional.