Throughout this course I definitely feel I experienced a lot of growth, especially when it comes to my academic ability / interest in gaining more education. It’s been over 11 years since I finished my undergraduate studies and this has been a great experience for starting a graduate degree program. When I was finishing up my last few years of undergrad in criminal justice I definitely felt like I was just going through the motions. I would say I didn’t give my full effort into those classes at the time because it wasn’t that interesting. I really just chose criminal justice because I was told it was one of the easier ones and my focus was more so on completing the ROTC program and moving on to being an active duty Army officer. That didn’t end up happening and I felt forced to go into an employment field I didn’t have a passion for.

Luckily after a few years I found something more interesting and that’s why I think I am enjoying these cybersecurity courses (this one and CYSE 605) so far.  I only wish I started this program a couple years ago instead of waiting until year 5 of my current job.

Also, even though a lot of the material in this class wasn’t new to me because I already received my Security+ certification, I will say the lab / simulation portions of the class are truly helpful in understanding things better.  I did not get to do as much of that during the training I received in 2018 and I don’t recall having to demonstrate that much of it on the Security+ exam. So while I was pretty familiar with a lot of the terms, I had very little experience with the hands on / practical aspects of these topics.  I am a lot more confident in these topics now.