My Feedback on Training at Greta-Viva5 in Valence: Work-Study, the Start of the Year, the Classes

Real-world use case

You're hesitant to start a work-study program: here's my feedback on the early days of my training at Greta-Viva5 in Valence.

My feedback on my training at Greta-Viva5

This article shares and explains my time at Greta-Viva5. I want to address the topic of digital education at school, specifically in the field of networking. By the end of my account, some questions remain:

• Are current teaching methods (the typical BTS SIO curriculum in France) relevant for training our future network and systems infrastructure technicians? Will they become good technicians with these methods?
• Does the learning process in the professional digital field discourage our students who are most passionate about IT?
• Is turning away from the traditional school-based digital education system a path the most talented take?

The articles that follow are the result of my four (far too long) years of professional and academic training within the French National Education system, in vocational baccalaureate (BAC pro) and BTS SIO. I'll focus on the BTS SIO, which is supposed to be a higher level. There will be three articles in a series over time:

Article 1, right here, covers the work-study program, the start of the year, and classes at Greta-Viva5 in Valence. I then tell you about my mind-blowing anecdotes that no one should have to go through. Then I finish (finally) with the various projects I completed and presented for the BTS SIO exams at Greta-Viva5 in Valence.

Enjoy the read, I hope my articles will make you aware of certain things.

To readers, following a request from the director of Greta-Viva5 in Valence:

The following articles express my personal feelings, and I think it's important not to treat them as a generalization, this is only MY personal experience. From an administrative standpoint, the Greta training center in Valence is a springboard into the professional world through the work-study program it offers. I simply want to add that the somewhat different student I may have been can't put all the blame on Greta-Viva5 alone, this is also the result of the French national education system: /dev/null.
You now have all the elements to confidently read through my various accounts detailing everything about my time at Greta-Viva5 in Valence.

What kind of student am I?

Having struggled at school myself, I wanted to move toward a more career-focused program, and work-study seemed perfectly suited to my temperament.

My relationship with school has been a string of academic struggles.

I've long loved networking, learning about (open) technologies, IT systems, and cybersecurity. Yet, despite my enthusiasm for computing acquired at age 12, the BTS and school-based digital education can quickly become disappointing. They personally disappointed me and don't show the reality of the professional world. It's clear that my former vocational high school, Saint-Louis, and my former training center, Greta-Viva5 in Valence for the BTS SIO, are perfect examples where digital education is very disappointing for a student who shows real open-mindedness about technology and the possibilities it offers.

"When school forgets its struggling students, it's the whole school system that suffers. It's a double blow to national cohesion."

How I searched for a work-study placement

As for me, I didn't really have a choice and had to keep going to school due to parental pressure.
Following on from the vocational baccalaureate, a host company was required for the BTS.
Work-study training centers have different selection criteria, and the hardest part is indeed signing a work-study contract!

During my second year of vocational baccalaureate, I did an 8-week internship at a company called Yziact. Very happy with the work I did during this internship, they offered me a two-year professional training contract to join the company.
The job offer and my contract, as well as the pre-registration in Greta's work-study BTS SIO program, were confirmed. Good news at the time!

Searching for a work-study placement without Greta-Viva5

An unexpected twist happened on July 25, 2012, at 8:31 AM: Yziact was facing financial difficulties, and whether or not to take me on became a delicate decision. But the hardest part for me was the amount of time I had left before the school year started at Greta, one month and five days.
Yziact's leadership was aware of the problem.

That same day, I called Greta to find a solution and get some more time. As far as they were concerned, I no longer had a place in the 2012-2014 cohort.

Greta-Viva5 gave me no help and made it very clear that I was no longer part of the 2012-2014 cohort.

I asked them for time, that's the only thing I wanted, time.
Despite my efforts, they weren't willing to give me any, and I was determined not to get dropped from Greta. I needed to lock in my file, one way or another.

Yziact acted as an intermediary to highlight my motivation, so I wouldn't be immediately dropped. The next day, I contacted a company called Combonjour. It was a friend who had started as a young self-employed entrepreneur at age 17. He filled out my documents to lock in my file with Greta-Viva5 in Valence.

A young entrepreneur signs my Greta-Viva5 documents to buy me some time.

My only solution was to set up a scheme suggesting that Combonjour was ready to take me on. I was thus administratively accepted by Greta, so they could no longer drop me. The time I gained let me contact about sixty companies, and two of them were interested in my profile. I made my choice, and my new host company signed my contract.

The contract was signed, and yet Greta-Viva5 in Valence stuck to me like a leech.

Greta-Viva5 had my file locked in as a professional training contract, and my status needed to change to an apprenticeship contract, which turned out to be a difficult administrative process for them.
The Greta coordinator at the time didn't want to change my status, which would have canceled out all my efforts. Very frustrating after spending so much energy.

I played my last cards against a Greta that was tough on me.

Yziact, Es2com (my new employer), and Combonjour, along with a letter of recommendation, allowed me, with my parents' help as well, to get a meeting with Greta's coordinator.

The meeting with Greta's coordinator

That day were present: Greta's coordinator, my parents (in an advanced state of stress), and me (you can imagine the state I was in). The decision rested on a single person (the coordinator), which was tricky. But she asked me a single question, which would determine whether I'd be accepted or not:

Why did you choose a new company, when Combonjour had already pre-filled your file?

Actually, it was an obvious question for me, and I simply told her that my new employer works in networking and infrastructure, while Combonjour is a company that works in web development with a single outsourced server.

My program was network-focused, so it made more sense for me to work at that company.

"I accept your validation into an apprenticeship contract at your new company"

A theatrical demonstration took place in front of me, and at that moment, I clearly remember her raising her fist as high as she could and slamming it on the table: "I accept your validation into an apprenticeship contract at your new company."

Alright, now that it's been said, let's move quickly before she changes her mind.

My first experience with Greta-Viva5 was already bitter, even before the school year had started.

The start of the school year at Greta-Viva5

I was on board the boat they had tried to throw me off of. On Thursday, September 13, 2012, at 8:00 AM, I was present for roll call for the 2012-2014 cohort.

I quickly talked with the students, who told me Greta had helped them find a company. At least they got to have a calm and peaceful summer.

Actually, what they said matched what my cousin (a former Greta BTS SIO student) told me, confirming that they do help them.

A start of the year full of questions

Was being pushed out intentional? If so, could my former high school have had something to do with it? I appreciated sharing ideas and finding alternatives to the solutions the classes offered, and I quickly understood that the teaching staff wouldn't cut me any slack, since offering them new solutions they didn't necessarily master wasn't part of the curriculum. Expressing my point of view didn't seem to fit their vision of professional education in France.

I remained passive and disappointed throughout my time in the vocational baccalaureate (SEN) and then the BTS SIO, and the start of the year reflected the endless vicious cycle I was in, academically speaking.

The Greta-Viva5 way of starting the year

Starting the year at Greta put me in a difficult position and made me feel like I didn't belong. The questions I asked myself surely set a limit on my relationship with them. I stuck to the idea of learning, on my own, the technologies that seemed most innovative and relevant to me. The teachers followed the BTS SIO curriculum (see below), aimed at an audience with no background in the field. I paid no attention to it, since my Arch Linux setup and my SaaS infrastructure (OVH) were far better suited to my job as a technician.

At the start of the year, students began to look at me warily because of my laptop bag and my Arch Linux system. They had pens and A4 sheets of paper, while I came to class with my laptop and my Linux cheat-sheet book. I quickly realized that most students had no skills in the field at all. That didn't help me going forward.

In the end, a start of the year like any other

I felt like I was locked up like I was back in middle school. I was put back in a class learning unproductive things, or technical things that, unluckily for me, I'd already mastered since age 15. And you're expected to let yourself be taught technologically outdated solutions. No thanks.
That's how my teacher looked up the "Comment ça marche" website to explain to us the three types of networks in VirtualBox (proof in article 2).

Unfortunately, I think they made me realize the growing gap between the digital education taught in school and today's digital innovations.

A disappointment for me.

The company at the heart of my motivation

I had in front of me a company, users, machines, networks, and therefore several companies' IT fleets to manage! That was my best "back to school"… professionally speaking.

It was the event I looked forward to the most, far more rewarding than starting the year with Greta-Viva5!

Here, no more rigid school curriculum, you respond to user needs, and the system must constantly evolve to open up new possibilities.

Unfortunately, Greta's shadow was everywhere, I still regularly had to sign administrative paperwork. But I had joined the company, and they could no longer take away the immense joy of having found my place there.

BTS SIO classes at Greta-Viva5 in Valence

Classes took place on the other two days of the week when I wasn't at the company.
Suffice it to say the training schedule was very well thought out by Greta-Viva5 in Valence.
The subjects taught by the Greta training center are:

• General culture and expression: this is the same as French class in high school.
• Expression and communication in English: this is the same as English class in high school, except for speaking practice.
• Mathematics: the same as high school (advanced math level in the science baccalaureate track), with no application to computing whatsoever.
• Applied algorithmics: this subject is poorly taught and quickly turns students off, a shame.
• Economic, managerial, and legal analysis of IT services: this is economics/law applied to today's technology, a subject that opens your mind to businesses and the world.
• Specialization: infrastructure solutions, systems: this is basically the Cisco curriculum and Windows 2008 labs.
• Supervised personal projects: access, in the second year, to a hypervisor platform for the BTS.

Overall, nothing differs from a typical tech curriculum except for the specialization track.

In my case, I was in the SISR option, and here's what we were taught:

• The basics of a computer and what it's made of. Don't forget the complex hard drive platter calculations, you never know if that's very important during troubleshooting, and we get shown Windows 7.
• The basics of computer networking following the Cisco curriculum, with fairly proprietary network standards. Every week, a quiz on the Cisco course, on Cisco's platform.
• The basics of Windows Server 2008/2008R2, with 6 hands-on labs over two years.
• One or two classes on Linux, with a Debian 6 install (install time between 13 and 16 hours), followed by a lab on: F.A.N (a tool I'd already known since 2010).
• A very quick introduction to virtualization and hypervisors to prepare our supervised projects for the BTS SIO's E4 exam.
• Learning about today's major companies, of course you need to remember NASDAQ stock movements, headcount, market cap, etc., etc… and each company's Wikipedia page. Here's Microsoft.
• A very interesting class on the different types of RAID and their efficiency, taught by a professional.
• Writing a set of specifications, in response to a request for proposal, using Word.
• Taking the C2i exam via the Moodle platform, my entire class failed. And they refused to give me back my password, which I had misplaced, even though during the exam I improved my Arch setup. Word processing just isn't for me. InDesign, you're so much prettier by comparison!
• An XHTML/PHP3/CSS2 class taught by the applied math-for-computing teacher, and I believe the final result looked something like this: a gorgeous, very-of-its-time website.
• You'll be working with the all-too-well-known IPCop v1.4, developed in 2004, even though I thought the BTS SIO was supposed to be an evolution of the BTS IG and that methods would follow suit.
• Don't forget to work hard on your services: AD, DHCP, DNS, and Windows routing, since that's what you'll be quizzed on regarding the hypervisor infrastructure (a long project spanning two years).
• An SQL module lasting an endless number of weeks.

I think I've listed all the methods the BTS SIO program in Valence teaches us over two years. I won't list the full content, there'd be no point going through all 1,385 hours of classroom training.

My first article about my experience ends here, I invite you to read the rest of my time at Greta-Viva5 in Valence, in the SIO section, at the following address: my feedback on training at Greta-Viva5 in Valence: mind-blowing anecdotes.

Conclusion

This first article in my account looks back at my journey to join the work-study BTS SIO program at Greta-Viva5 in Valence: the challenges of signing a contract despite my first host company backing out, a start of the year marked by a feeling of disconnect from the school curriculum, and an overview of the content taught over the two years of training. I share a personal impression here, without claiming it as a generalization, of the gap I perceived between the digital education taught at school and the realities of the job experienced in a company. The rest of my account, covering more striking anecdotes and then my study projects, rounds out this first piece of feedback.