I have visited Oslo, Norway’s Vigeland Park and also have a postcard in my office of the little Angry Boy (Sinnataggen) statue and it reminds me of the frustration I have occasionally felt while attempting to teach myself SAS programming. There are times when I want to mimic this little’s boys stance – hands in fists, shoulders pulled up tight to the ears and one foot raised just moments before you know it’s going to smack the floor. But instead of throwing a tantrum about re-reading a section multiple times before I understand the concepts, I take a few deep breaths and think about why I am attempting this.

The main reason I am attempting this is so I can learn a new skill set that could help with the internal processes within my group. We currently have many manual processes that need improvement and I think it can be accomplished with some programming. Being certified isn’t the only answer - I know that I will need to practice and will need some guidance from friends around here that program daily. At the end of this certification process, I’m anticipating I’ll still have a lot to learn and understand that my knowledge will only continue to grow.

Undertaking this task is no easy feat and I’m beginning to realize that we’ll probably need more than the Certification Prep Guide to pass the exam. The Prep Guide is a wonderful tool full of sample data, programs and exercises so we can practice interpreting, analyzing and manipulating our data. But, it may not be enough for Stacey and me to pass. Therefore, Stacey is setting up a bi-monthly study group with some SAS folks she meet at a conference and we will bring in some experts (some of our R&D folks) to go over concepts that are problematic for us.

We also have a wonderful resource at our disposal – the Certification department within SAS Education that offers Classroom training, Live Web classes and Self-paced e-Learning. If, or when, the time comes when we need more help than the Certification Prep Guide is giving us, we are keeping the option of using some of the Certification’s department’s tools.

So between self-study, group study, various training options from our Education department and kind programmer friends that have offered their skills and knowledge, we are hoping this village can teach us the basic of SAS Programming.