Neither. More like I wasn't watching my feet, tripped, and landed face-first on a big pile of DBA.

My first rude awakening on it was how unclear basic terminology was in this field. My first question when I started workin with databases was, "why do they call them 'relational'?", and the top definition I found via Google at that time was "relational: of or having to do with relations in databases", "relation: what they have in relational databases", "relational database: databases that have relations".

Turns out, "relation" = "table". Had to get a computer science book from the 70s, when the concept was new, in order to get that definition in plain English. Otherwise, it was all circular definitions, and very unclear. (Don't believe me that "relation"="table"? Check definition 2 here: http://foldoc.org/relation.)

Still shocks me when I run into DBAs who think "relational database" = "database with foreign keys".

It was a rude awakening to realize that many of the people who are "experts" on IT, of any sort, DBAs, devs, sys admins, you-name-it, are often people who fell on the career and don't know basic terminology, much less basic theory or practice. Kind of like running into a doctor who doesn't know what "tissue" means, or a lawyer who's unclear on the definition of "lawsuit", or a politician who has never heard of "graft" or "lying". Key concepts of their chosen careers, right?

But we don't even have a single definition of "DBA". Still bothers me, to this day.