Learning SAP with a little help from your friends

[Mike_Conners]

Find out why it's safe to raise your hand in an SAP learning room

In school I was really bad at Math. What’s worse, I would try to make myself invisible in class for fear that the teacher might call on me.  This caught up with me in a big way during my freshman year in high school.  I was a new kid in a new school when I encountered the scariest teacher in the history of teachers – in Algebra class!

Out of fear and respect (mostly fear), I can’t tell you her real name.  The upperclassmen called her “Sarge,” which was fitting.  If nuns were allowed in the U.S. Marine Corps, she would’ve been a perfect drill sergeant.  What’s worse, she kept a club called “Killer” on her desk.  I never saw Sarge use Killer, but I never doubted that she would it if provoked.

At the end of each class, Sarge would give us a set of Algebra problems for homework.  Then, the next day she’d call us to the front of the room in small groups to write out our solutions on the chalkboard.

Every day I stood in the front of the classroom with my back to 20 classmates I hardly knew and waited to be picked on for my Algebra ineptitude.  One day I really screwed up and Sarge said to me, “Conners, you are the President of the dumb-dumb Club.”  (She even wrote it on my homework paper!) Is there any wonder I chose a career as a writer?

This summer at SAP I met the opposite of Sarge. By all accounts, Mark Green, an SAP instructors based in the U.K., is a great guy who cares about helping students learn SAP.  My hunch is that he wouldn’t give me a hard time if I asked a question, for example, about “temporal joins” or “fuzzy search” in SAP HANA.

Mark’s made it his mission to make learning SAP more accessible to those of you who can’t travel to class, or would simply prefer to learn when and where you choose.  To this end, he’s become an evangelist for learning rooms within SAP Learning Hub.  Right now he’s a moderator of the SAP HANA Introduction, Implementation & Modeling room.

The truth is, learning rooms aren’t that way at all because they’re run by people like Mark.  As he puts it, learning rooms are filled with “learning buddies” who are there to help each other.  To make his point, he's written a fun story about a consultant name Julie, who rides the learning room express all the way to SAP HANA certification.  The story is called With A Little Help From My (Learning Room ) Friends.

Why should you read Mark’s story?  “Because if you know how to use the resources available in learning rooms, you will increase your chances of certification success,” he says.  “You’ll also widen your network of contacts who can assist you whenever you have a question or need help.”

Click here to read why it’s safe to raise your hand in SAP learning rooms

A footnote about my high school Algebra career.  Despite the obvious trauma, in the Spring of my freshman year I scored a 95 out of 100 on the New York State Regents exam for Algebra.  I never got to thank my teacher for all the help she gave me – she wasn’t at our school the next year.   So, many years later, thank you Sister for steering me toward a career in writing.