IDS 493

Program and Course Reflection –

My time with the Cybersecurity Program at Old Dominion University has not been one accompanied by smooth sailing. The program has required me to re-evaluate my studying, working, and researching habits that I had throughout my school career before. The experience has provided me with new friends, new skills, and an appreciation for how much work goes into keeping cyberspace safe for all. My time at ODU itself has been one that I will definitely not forget either, when I dreamed of going to college I did not really expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I had. The skills that I value the most from the programs I have taken would have to relate to my Cyber Law, Cyber Ethics, and Cyber Techniques and Operations courses. These classes provided me with an in-depth understanding of exactly how complicated the Cyber world can be, and how much knowledge I will have to keep learning and expanding upon to keep up with the changes that occur daily.

The most valuable learning experiences that I have had here at Old Dominion University come in the form of leaning away from the bad study habits and procrastination that have plagued me throughout these past four years. These same lessons that I have learned also contributed to the obstacles that I have faced. Through perseverance and some bad grades, I learned that the most effective way to tackle these obstacles is to take some time to create a list and work out that same list in a quiet area away from the dorm, away from distractions. The list was not a full proof method, but it provided me a way to solidify and accomplish tasks that pushed me to my limits at some points, especially during the final weeks of semesters.

Some of the previous courses that helped to motivate me and help me to complete the program would have to be the Internship class. This class provided me with real life experience in a professional setting which bolstered confidence in the skills that I had been fostering throughout the previous semesters and years. One instance that stood out to me would have to be the transferring of digital skills and teaching them to other students who had no experience with coding or any technical matters at all.

The IDS 493 Course was a welcome breath of fresh air for a very full course load. The workload was not extremely demanding so it did not add unnecessary stress for my senior year, and working on a portfolio that I know I will refer back to has provided me with the necessary experience to keep updating, creating, and revising it for future employers. I had no idea the depth that a professional portfolio creation would require, especially requiring me to consider those who I had no idea might view my page. The addition of alt text, screen reader friendly, and general user friendly adaptations to my page was not something I would have considered on my own. I am the most proud of how well put together and professional the portfolio itself looks now, compared to the sporadic mess of posts and journal entries that it used to be. The one thing I would say that would improve with more time would have to be the exact design of the portfolio page itself, using a different website preferably. The one thing that definitely helped with this course was the fact that I had already created pages for some of my other courses, and using the previous material as an example I had the ability to translate it into the class seamlessly.

In the future, I plan to take the interdisciplinary skills I have learned in the course into the professional world. These will be important to my career due to the fact that Cybersecurity requires so many different facets of thought, not only just the technical aspects that we attribute to the field. The different courses I have taken all have provided me with different thought processes and required me to think in numerous different ways to successfully complete my degree.