My Experience at ODU and IDS 493

My experience with ODU and its Cybersecurity program is one from the comfort of my home. My entire time at ODU I have been an online student, one of the main reasons I chose to transfer to ODU is because of the online aspect. Throughout my few years at ODU I found that research skills and professional writing skills are very important.

Challenging Moment

Currently I am going through a tough moment. I have dug myself a terrible hole. I am currently planning to graduate in the Fall of 2024, but as of writing this I will probably not pass this class. I paid little attention to this class at the beginning of the year, focused on my other classes in which I thought I would struggle in, this proved the wrong choice. This will have repercussions for the job I currently have lined up. I plan to take this class and moment as a learning experience and to grow from it. I hope to revisit this page next semester with some new insights.

Interdisciplinary Experience.

I first heard of Interdisciplinary here at ODU, it was a bit confusing to me at first and I didn’t quite understand it at first, but as my time here at ODU went on and I completed classes in Criminology, Psychology, Sociology, Information Technology, and Computer Science, I started to understand the interdisciplinary nature of Cybersecurity. Understanding human behavior and human interaction with computers is critical to cybersecurity functions as in most cases the end-user’s themselves tend to be the weakest link or the biggest “vulnerability”.

IDS Experience

IDS 493 is a capstone course, designed to summarize and showcase your work completed at ODU relating to your degree/field of study, through a website. It is designed to teach students how to design a website, front-end design elements and UI implementation.Throughout the class I picked up many skills while working on the website, particularly through WordPress, the engine I used for designing my website. This class opened my eyes to the accessibility issue of websites and web design. I had issues with my dropdowns on my site, so I created landing pages for each category with links for mobile uses.This class has taught me the importance of how to present yourself and how to really improve my professionalism. The importance of punctuality and reading your email on a regular basis.

Conclusion

This class and my ODU classes were a big learning experience for me and not just in Cybersecurity, but in professionalism, communications and creativity. Although I may fail this, I am going to take it in stride, and retake the course with 100% attention to it. I have made one mistake here at ODU and it set back my graduation. I will not make it again.