I worked construction during high school and college summers and holidays. The people I met were a ton of fun and had great stories. The people who’d been incarcerated, they had the best. My move from construction to computers included many discussions centered on comparisons of the two. Something specific about computer work I really appreciate is the opportunity to rehearse. To say it another way, there is no CTRL+Z for the improperly cut 2×4. This gift is exquisite, should not be ignored and, when coupled with scripting skills, has phenomenal potential.
Let me tell a story about my first deployment as the primary dba at a company with a hub and spoke, bidirectionally configured transactional replication set up. I was working with committed professionals at a company which was prosperous and had good management. I didn’t want to be the problem! So I practiced. I had the system guys set me up a series of unused desktops on a separate domain named the same as the production sql servers they were to mimic. Then I set out creating the scripts which would drop the subscriptions and articles, execute the alter and create statements, and put it back together again. The computers were put in a mostly empty storage room and that is where I sat until I was ready. It was an epic weekend and the results were awesome: I took 3 hours to complete what the previous dba took about 30 hours to finish.
Of course there are times when there is no room for practice. At least the first time. Once the matter is resolved, stay serious and take a close look at why you were in that situation. How and what will you do to have the best chance of never going there again? Be humble and use every opportunity to rehearse.