Learn to hack on the OS of your choice. Make sure it's fun to you first. Next, get a job as helpdesk. Go through the pain of being the first person people talk

Learn to hack on the OS of your choice. Make sure it's fun to you first. Next, get a job as helpdesk. Go through the pain of being the first person people talk to when stuff it broke. Try to fix it. Always try to fix it before you escalate. Preferably you get this job a mid-size company where you can have the opportunity to get to know the staff in general. Single office, walk around it once a day just saying hi to everyone. Eventually they'll start to wait for you to make your rounds to get help. You're building relationships. Get to know the maintenance and security guys in your building. These people need to be your friend. Your systems don't run without power, and you need to be able to get to consoles. Watch for and take opportunities to get into a sysadmin position. Now, working on the trade skill of being lazy. Every task you do, think about how you can automate it. That's one of the real arts to being a sysadmin, if you have a lot of work that keeps you busy, how are you going to have time to respond to problems. By taking this route though, you've built up one of the 4 skills I think you need to be a good sysadmin. People skills. Remember, by the time someone has to talk to you they've already had to deal with at least one other person who could not fix their problem. The rest of the skills you get from experience as a sysadmin. Scripting, documenting, creating DR scenarios and such... it's a never ending learning opportunity. If you've learned all there is to learn where you're at, then it's time to move on, unless you just really like it there. As often as not the latter is the case and that's not a bad thing as long as it pays the bills. The one thing I always tell people who ask me to explain being a sysadmin to them is this. It's a service oriented position. The employees are your customers. The business is your customer. Your boss is your customer. You will hit a point where you think there is a technical answer to everything and you know better than them. You don't. It's not your job to make technology changes to change everything and make it easier. It's your job to implement and maintain what the business users feel they need to use to get their job done. Their positions make money for the organization you work for, your department is nothing but cost. Remember that and you can save yourself a lot of frustration. Oh... and go home and build yourself a nice home network. This is a job where you take mental tasks home with you, having a place to play is helpful. Also helpful for job interviews.