Frank,

  I already took that class about 3 months ago in anticipation of moving to SQL2000.  If you can start looking into DTS (Data Transformation Services) it is a very powerful tool for ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) and you can end up automating a lot of activities that you may manually do now.  You will also start learning VBScript (or JScript) which will allow you a lot of flexibility in what you can do in DTS. 

  Just running and starting to delve into Performance Monitor will help make you aware of all of the various Objects that you can monitor.  As I said, I have learned a lot over the past two years or so just trying to figure out why we were/are having performance issues.  The web has a lot of information also so never fail to use your Google searches on topics you want to learn more about...