“Just when I think I have it down, I find I’m actually trapped underneath it.” - Kathleen Kanz

This seems to perfectly sum up my first few weeks of self-study to prepare for the Base SAS certification test. You see, I’m not a technical person by any means and, although I aced the statistics class I took in summer school during college, I’m far from a statistician too. So, trying to teach myself how to write code is just a tad challenging. I am a business communications major and for the last nine years I have been working in SAS’ Publications department, most recently in the marketing department. This past winter I took my first instructor-lead training class, Programming I, because I wanted to gain some insight into what customers were doing with the software and what my friends in R&D were doing when they weren’t playing soccer or kickball! I was surprised by the interest this course had generated in me - I mean, do you know what SAS can do?! Of course YOU do, but I didn’t and I am only beginning to learn the capabilities of our amazing software.

After some discussion with my manager, we decided to turn the interest this one class generated into a project where I would get certified. However, instead of taking more instructor-based training, I am going to try and teach myself to program using Ron Cody’s book Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer’s Guide, the SAS Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming, and my course notes from the Programming I class. Another co-worker, Stacey Hamilton, will be going through the same experience and we will blog and Twitter about our experiences on our path to become SAS certified. Stay tuned for more to come on the PROC CERTIFY; blog from Stacey and me.