a student adviser told me that it might be difficult for me to find a programming position given that I lack relevant experience and suggested that I apply for other jobs, such as QA, then go from there.
I applied to some QA jobs and went to interviews just to learn that I know nothing about unit testing, functional tests, and a bunch of other QA technologies and methodologies.
That said, where do I acquire that knowledge?
Is it matter of spending a weekend reading up on that stuff, or signing up for a QA course at a community college, assuming that those courses exist?