Skills
Resume
Reflection
Introduction
As mentioned in my personal narrative, cybersecurity was not my first choice when going to school here at Old Dominion University (ODU). However, when my first plan did not work out I found something that fits my love of helping people just as much or if not more than nursing would have. Throughout my time here at ODU I have definitely learned a lot of different skills that I did not have before as well as working on some I already had and just developing them further. When I started my cybersecurity major path I knew absolutely nothing about Linux or Python or anything about commands at all. Which my dad thought was crazy considering when I play The Sims at home I know pretty much every cheat code for the game. I think the first class I started to learn them in was my Basic Cybersecurity Programming and Networking class and my Linux Systems class. It was nice being able to do the commands and see how it worked like using ‘touch’ to create a file or adding a user with ‘useradd’.
For some of the assignments I also had to communicate with my professors to make sure if there were any issues that I could explain to them so they knew. One example being a quiz I took for my Cyber Fundamentals class that marked my answer as wrong even though I put the correct answer. I guess you had to write it a specific way but the teacher realized and made sure to mark those questions as correct.
When choosing what skill to include it wasn’t too hard because we had talked about different hard and soft skills in one of my classes this semester already and that included videos and websites detailing what ones are good to include (LearnFree 2018, Skillopedia 2019, & Junior Achievement).
Communication
In the skill section of my E-portfolio I included that communication, time management, and of course knowledge of how to use Linux, Ubuntu, and Python are skills that I have and learned while going to ODU. Communication is a skill I’ve always been good at because even as a kid I would be able to stand up for people who wouldn’t or explain things in a way that was easier for people to understand while not making them feel inferior for it. Of course going to ODU helped me learn how to communicate more professionally though.
For the communication skill I referenced 3 assignments that I felt really took a lot of back and forth communication to get through and finish. The first assignment was of the group projects I had when I took my cybercrime class last semester. We had 4 people in our group including me and although we did have class twice a week, Monday and Wednesday, because the professor was always teaching during the class we had to create a group chat to talk about when to work on the assignment. For this project specifically, we ended up having to do multiple group calls while working on our sections of the assignment as well as recording our explanations for the slides we created and deciding what order to do them in. By the end of the assignment we got full marks and the professor loved how it turned out.
For the next assignment I mentioned in the communication section, as mentioned earlier I learned how to use basic linux commands in spring 2024 and when fall came around I got to test them out with the very first assignment for my cyber techniques and operations class. This very much showed how much I learned previously and on the assignment I even circled and labeled the different sections so the professor knew exactly where they were.
The last assignment I mentioned in the communication part of my skill section was one of the case analysis projects I did for my Cybersecurity Ethics course, specifically the first one we did on Privacy. For this project we had to read different papers explaining how people feel about Google Maps being able to see their houses and sometimes even people and how an ethical standpoint, specifically utilitarianism, would view that. When I had first written the paper the professor told me that I needed to include more of the ethical views into my writing to prove what Google should do about the issues with its product so when I edited the paper I highlighted the sections I had added so she could see what I changed. Once she looked at it, she graded it as complete. Although the same thing happened for all of the other papers I wrote for that class, the interactions we had about what else I could add to the papers really helped me improve my writing. So much that by the time we got to the last paper for the semester it was graded as complete without any additions needed.
Time Management
Another skill I wrote in the skill section was time management. Time management is one of those skills that every job would like their applicants to have, especially if you want to complete your assignments and goals on time. For me, time management was very important because I had to balance being a full time student, working, and my personal life. So typically to keep up with everything I would write a list every week of all the assignments I needed to do and write when they are due and what date I would do each one. The first assignment I mentioned in this part was the Business Plan I had to write for my entrepreneurship class. This paper was to be between 10-12 pages long and of course that is a lot to do in one sitting. Thankfully the professor supplied us with an outline listing exactly what needed to be on each page. So, with the outline in mind, I decided which pages I would do on which days of the week. I pretty much did 3-4 pages a day and by the time it was done I was so happy.
The next assignment I mentioned was another one of the group projects for my cybercrime class. One issue with working with a team is that because everyone has their own classes, jobs, and lives, we had to balance out what days we could meet and work on the project. This one was just a powerpoint but it was the first one we did so we hadn’t exactly figured out how to work together properly yet. The day before the assignment was due we decided to have a video call to make sure everything was done or that we could all finish everything up and turn it in and from then on we pretty much figured out how to work together and space things out so we could get all of the other projects done on time too.
The last assignment I mentioned was another one of the case analysis papers for the entrepreneurship class. With learning and reading about different ethical ideals and information about user data, the papers for this class actually took a while to do. First you’d have to read the paper she would give us about one of the different ethical ideals and then write a short paper about it. Then, only after the paper is graded as a success you can move on to reading about the issues, in the case of the user data issue, and start writing a paper about that connecting whichever ethical ideal you want to connect it to. So, this class definitely took a lot of time management to get through. So throughout the week the paper was due I would start it off with reading about the ethical issue and writing that paper. While the paper is being graded I would read about the user data issue. Then once the paper is graded as complete, I would write the paper connecting the two.
Cyber Knowledge
The last skill that I mentioned was my knowledge of Linux, Ubuntu, and Python. Obviously I am not an expert in them but I did learn the basics of how to use them while going through the Cybersecurity program here at ODU. It was fun to learn new commands and to try the new ones we learned on the assignments given. So, I’m sure it is not a surprise that the assignments I mentioned that have to do with this skill are some of those same assignments. The Kali Linux related assignment was practice learning to crack a password using john the ripper and rockyou.txt. The Ubuntu assignment was practice adding new groups and users. Lastly, the Python assignment was practiced using different functions like sum() and input(). Python was a bit harder to learn because if you put the input in wrong it will mess up the output completely so that took a lot of practice and asking questions to figure it out. While I was learning the different commands, I found that using the different powerpoints the professor posted made it very easy to figure out which one to use because they explain what each command does.
I know a lot of the jobs I would be looking for would prefer more through knowledge than just the basics but I am still just starting out and with more and more experience and practice I will get better. Not to mention a lot of the jobs that need people with the Cybersecurity major also train them on how to do it, so with the basics in mind, that should make it easier to comprehend.
Conclusion
Throughout my time here at ODU I definitely found many different ways to incorporate many of the different courses I took into each other. My Cybersecurity Ethics class reminded me why I love psychology so much and even though writing all of those papers was very time consuming it was still fun to think about the different ways ethics can make someone think. Not to mention psychology is my minor and a lot of things can be connected back to psychology.In fact one of the projects I did for my IDS 300 class was us picking any topic and comparing it to different subjects or disciplines. My topic for this project was C-Sections and I tied the reasons why people may or may not prefer them to both psychology and scientific reasonings.
Overall, much like how we compared different disciplines in the IDS course and added ethical views to cybersecurity in another course, I believe that it can really open your eyes to the different ways people think and it can really help anyone understand others better and do better in their field, no matter what field it is.
References
LearnFree 2018>Hard Skills vs Soft Skills
Junior Achievement>https://jasouthflorida.org/top-soft-skills-in-the-21st-century-workplace/
Skillopedia 2019>5 Soft Skills You Will Need To Grow & Be Successful In Your Career | Personal Development Training