System administrator (to be or not to be)
hga: Yes.  I got unceremoniously dumped out of my college path by finances after my freshman year and started out with a sysadmin job that eventually had some serious programming.Can't advise on the "how do i prove my worth", I found the job by networking and by virtue of being one of the very few at the time (1980) who knew UNIX well (at least at the user level) and was mentored/apprenticed for what I was lacking.