Over my academic career in ODU, I have learned a great deal. My time at ODU has taught me valuable lessons in time management, discipline, problem solving, and flexibility. Everything I have learned in my core courses such as cyber techniques and operations have given me valuable experience with essential tools for any security professional and the methodologies, policy, and thinking processes of security professionals. The classes that I possibly valued the most though were ones that taught me how to think more critically and use different avenues of information such as PHIL 355E and IDS 300W.
Within ODU I have many valuable learning experiences, some of the ones that come to mind the most are those that greatly tested my problem-solving ability. One such class was CYSE 250, my final assignment for this class I was tasked with creating a program that would apply multiple concepts learned throughout the semester, having to trouble shoot and research and reach out to others to double check my work for errors when my program would fail taught me all the different places I can look to in order to achieve my goals.
One obstacle I encountered during my learning experience was effective time management, as I have been working full time while attending school full time it was important to understand my abilities in how quickly I can get different assignments done to keep up with my more demanding schedule, as well as regiment myself much better as to not fall behind.
Previous courses were of a big help for me as I progressed throughout the semesters, many of which allowed me to learn foundational concepts that could be applied in different areas. One class that I am particularly glad I took was CYSE 270 as it gave me experience with setting up virtual machines and basic programming and cybersecurity concepts within Linux that often came up in different classes.
IDS 493 is a course that teaches you how to properly and professionally set up an e-porfolio, giving guidance on things like accessibility, understanding your audience, implementation of tools such as hyperlinks and subtitles.
The most valuable concept I learned in IDS 493 is understanding your audience. When constructing an e-portfolio it is important to tailor for your specific audience, emphasizing the thing that they want to see, and making it easy and accessible for them.
The aspects that were most challenging for me within IDS 493 was trying to properly and smoothly implement a lot of these tools, as much of my portfolio is mostly document so there is not much chance to put in links to different profiles or projects that I have done.
Previous courses helped me complete this course by showing me how to properly explain and format my work for report so that the intended audience can understand my intentions with each step of my work.
Interdisciplinary methods have shown to be extremely important throughout my coursework at ODU. As a cybersecurity major we must deal with all fields that relate or interact with cybersecurity as information technologies are used all over the world in almost every field. Understanding policy and jurisdictions, the economic challenges of implementation, and the psychology of people both within and outside of the organization whether it be mistakes or purposeful threat acting.
After I finish here at ODU, I will be looking to gain experience in various information technology fields to get hands on experience within a work environment and more deeply understand the current landscape and how these technologies work, this will assist me as I try to rise to becoming a security analyst position for these technologies to protect the digital ecosystems under my jurisdiction.