I dont know if you are going to believe this, but in Venezuela, my country, some lucky guys as myself got the chance to enter in a FREE programming course, and yes they tought us JSP and Java Servlets.
I'm not going to say that was the best course, but for being absolutely free , I can't complaint.
What motivated me? I'm a nerd, a geek, I like being that, and I feel I couldn't be one of those, without knowing at least some programming. And of course, it was free :)
Good luck :)
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As I am fully self-taught, I tend to rip things apart to see how they work. As I got more and more involved in the internet, I found more and more dynamic sites with funky codes which intrigued me. My interest piqued when I decided to create my own e-zine from scratch - with the ability to post articles without having to dinker with html. A whole new world opened for me as I tried phpNuke. I was enamored, but found the phpNuke to not quite do what I wanted.

I was in Borders looking at geek books, and came across Tomcat; The Definitive Guide for Tomcat (4). I read a bit - only to be interrupted by some book-kid who told me the store was closing! I had to buy it. For the first time in my layman years as a web designer, SOMETHING MADE SENSE!

Now, almost 10 years later, I am a department supervisor programming, designing, engineering and developing Java ecommerce sites using .jsp, Velocity, Struts, Springs and other Java technologies. I also use javascripting, xml, css and more... and there is more... just so much more....

And I have absolutely no certifications in any of this! Go figure!
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