[sethammons]

I would recommend getting familiar with using your db from the command line. If you are in MySQL or Postgres, learn the basics. selects, inserts, updates, deletes, and joins. After you have a bead on those, get used to subqueries. Learn what denormalization is (might want to do that so you can play with joins). Learn what transactions are. At this point, you are probably better than most. After that, start digging into deeper parts by going through public docs and seeing what neat functions they provide.

After you know the above, you can use that SQL knowledge in any language you want when accessing the db. No need to learn a new ORM per language or anything.

Also, at this point, you are likely to start understanding more about scaling systems which involve intelligently choosing indexes, replication, and sharding. Now you are on your way to Jr. DBA status :)

That was my path at least. There are likely better ways.