{"id":256,"date":"2026-02-16T03:03:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T03:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.odu.edu\/cyberimpact-template\/?page_id=256"},"modified":"2026-08-22T03:23:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T03:23:33","slug":"ids-493","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/everettb\/ids-493\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Narrative Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everett Bostwick<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Everett<\/figure>\n

How I Would Introduce Myself Professionally<\/h3>\n

My name is Everett Bostwick, and I am a student at Old Dominion University working toward my degree in cybersecurity. The simplest way to describe myself is that I like knowing how things work, and I like building them myself. That shows up in pretty much everything I do. I build my own computers instead of buying them prebuilt. I taught myself iOS development and built an app called Thrive<\/a> that is live on the App Store right now. And on the weekends, I work as a camera operator for FloSports, helping broadcast live sports to people watching all over the country. Cybersecurity ties all of that together for me, because once you have built enough things yourself, you start caring a lot about what keeps them safe and what could break them. I am most interested in work where I get to be hands-on with real systems, whether that means securing them, fixing them, or building them from scratch.<\/p>\n

Key Experiences That Shaped My Path<\/h3>\n

The biggest thing I have done so far is building Thrive. Thrive is a wellness app I designed and coded entirely on my own using SwiftUI. The idea is simple: it blocks the apps that eat your time, like social media, streaming, and games, until you finish your health tasks for the day, things like drinking water, working out, and eating your meals. Over time I kept adding to it. It has an Apple Watch app, home screen widgets, a friends and leaderboard system, and a barcode scanner that lets you scan the food you are eating so the app can identify it and log it for you. Nobody assigned me this project. There was no professor grading it and no deadline besides the ones I set for myself. I built it because I wanted it to exist, and then I had to figure out everything that comes after the code, like getting it approved on the App Store, marketing it, and reaching out to people to try it. That taught me more about follow through than any class could.<\/p>\n

My job as a camera operator for FloSports has shaped me in a completely different way. Live sports do not wait for anyone. When the broadcast starts, everything has to work, and if something goes wrong, you fix it while thousands of people are watching. Working those events taught me how to stay locked in under pressure and how many moving pieces, both people and technology, have to line up perfectly for a live stream to reach someone’s screen without a hiccup. It also gave me a real appreciation for the systems behind the scenes. When you are standing behind a camera knowing that the signal has to travel across the country in real time, you start thinking about everything that could go wrong along the way, and what protects it.<\/p>\n

Building computers is the third piece, and honestly it is where all of this started. Picking out parts, putting a machine together, and troubleshooting it when it does not boot taught me not to be intimidated by technology. Once you have built a computer from a pile of components, software problems, network problems, and security problems all feel more approachable, because you understand the machine underneath them. That comfort with hardware is a big part of why cybersecurity clicked for me as a major. I already knew the systems; now I wanted to learn how to protect them.<\/p>\n

What I Learned Along the Way<\/h3>\n

The biggest thing Thrive taught me is that finishing is a skill. It is easy to start a project and easy to quit one when it gets frustrating. Teaching myself iOS development meant being confused a lot, breaking things constantly, and fixing one bug at a time until a feature finally worked. I learned to be patient with problems instead of running from them. I also learned that building something is only half the job. Getting people to actually find and use your app means learning marketing, App Store optimization, and how to reach out to strangers, which pushed me way outside my comfort zone as a technical person.<\/p>\n

FloSports taught me composure. On a live broadcast there is no pause button and no redo, so I learned to communicate fast and clearly with the crew, adapt when plans change last second, and stay calm when something breaks. That is a mindset I think transfers directly into cybersecurity, where incidents happen in real time and panicking helps nobody.<\/p>\n

And across all of it, building computers, building an app, and working live events, I learned to think about systems as a whole. An app is not just code; it depends on servers, connections, and the person using it. A broadcast is not just a camera; it is a whole chain of technology that has to hold up under pressure. Cybersecurity is the same way. It is never just one firewall or one password; it is understanding how everything connects and where the weak points are.<\/p>\n

Where I Am Headed<\/h3>\n

After graduation, I want to start my career in cybersecurity, ideally in a hands-on role where I am working directly with real systems, whether that is security operations, protecting infrastructure, or helping organizations find their weak points before someone else does. My time at FloSports showed me how much depends on technology working in real time, and I would love to help protect the kinds of systems that cannot afford to go down.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I am not putting Thrive on a shelf. I plan to keep developing and growing it alongside my career, because owning something from the ground up, code, design, marketing, all of it, has become the best learning experience I have ever had.<\/p>\n

Long term, I want to be the kind of professional who understands technology at every level, from the hardware I have assembled with my own hands, to the apps I have shipped, to the security that keeps it all safe. I know I still have plenty to learn, but everything I have built so far tells me I am headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everett Bostwick How I Would Introduce Myself Professionally My name is Everett Bostwick, and I am a student at Old Dominion University working toward my degree in cybersecurity. The simplest way to describe myself is that I like knowing how things work, and I like building them myself. That shows up in pretty much everything… <\/p>\n

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