Zack Mitchell

Reflection #2

            Going into the second fifty hours of my internship, I had intended to steer more in the direction of proper Cybersecurity work to gain a deeper understanding of the field. However, this did not go exactly as planned, and most of what I did was focused more on the advertising side of things rather than Cybersecurity directly. To recap on my previous experiences, I have primarily been working with a program within Valor called “Build Your Legacy,” to help up and coming cyber graduates find work after college, and I was tasked with finding ways to spread the word about the program to more students at ODU.

            The biggest thing that we did for spreading the word was running a booth at the Career Connections event here at ODU on October 15. Me and Greg worked to outline his program to the passerby students at ODU and educate them on why it would be valuable for them to partake in it. While I do not know the specifics of how successful the event was exactly, we were able to inform many students about Build Your Legacy, and they all seemed to have a positive reception to the program at the event. I especially had a chance to work on advertising skills/talking to people professionally as I was running the booth solo for around half of the event.

            After this, I was able to coordinate with ODU staff to make sure the extra copies of our fliers ended up at the Cybersecurity Hangout room in the Monarch Hall, which I also verified at a later date to check up on. I have also been in communication with a few cyber clubs at ODU to see if they could offer a similar opportunity to what we have done in the hangout room during some of their club events.

Conclusion

            Overall, while I still was not doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in the internship, I feel as if I was very successful in spreading the word to more people. I do think that this program that I have been focusing on has the right idea, and I support the message behind it. In other news, I was also supposed to begin a “technical project” more in line with my learning goals at the end of October, but it was delayed due to Greg taking some extended time off. My hope is that this technical project is something interesting that will show me more about the world in cyber and give me a taste of what is to come.