My name is Watavien Favors and I am a senior majoring in cybersecurity at Old Dominion University looking to graduate in December 2023. I have taken many classes over my three years I’ve been enrolled at ODU, some of those being Linux systems, digital forensics, and cyber criminology, just to name a few. I enjoy learning about how these criminals think and ways to think ahead to stop them which is what cybersecurity is all about it’s about stopping security from infiltrating your system and compromising information that should not be shared. Some of the things I do outside of class I can relate to it in certain aspects. Some of those hobbies I enjoy doing are playing basketball or any type of sport and I am I’m also a photographer on the side. Playing basketball or any type of sport requires you to think rationally because it’s not just you it’s your whole team and that goes with Cybersecurity because you’re you must think about your organization, and anybody related to your organization which could include consumers. You may not be thinking rationally and not securing the system like it should, it can compromise a lot of people’s information. When it comes to photography you must look at things from a different point of view. What I see through the camera as a photographer you may not see someone looking from behind. What I see as a person who understands the system and knows what’s good and bad may be different from what you may see as a consumer. You may not think your password can be cracked but you haven’t seen for yourself how easily it could be cracked. The impact I want to make is to decrease the number of consumers whose information is compromised because who knows what the enemy may do with the information, they have gathered the times for bad purposes, and who wants that? People getting educated in cybersecurity is the first step to slowing down the infiltration of systems. I was born outside of Virginia and lived outside the country for numerous years as a child. Allowing me to see different parts of the world and experience different people and cultures. You may ask what that has to do with me, but for me, experiencing that allowed me to learn how to adapt to new environments and people. It taught me how to navigate the world on my own and not necessarily get attached at a young age, which I think is a good thing because of how much the world is changing and the occurrence of unprecedented events. Below is a little bit more about me and my educational decisions, as well as a reflection on things I’ve learned.