Finished my master's degree I had my last classes on sat and sun. submitted my final assignment last night.
then i went thru to check to see if any new grades came in... got an A in 2 of my classes this semester. waiting to hear from my 3rd class.
Went through some of my assignments because some grades came in, and i was curious to see what i got. Then i looked at the assignments i submitted, 2 powerpoints, and got very sad that it's all over. I really appreciated how this particular professor made us do a lot of presentations, and they were on topics that there were no "real" answers on, at all. He got us to realize that cybersecurity is a constantly evolving field, and that we have to be on the forefront. this means a lot of us are just making it up as we go along. i also really appreciated the simulations we did in class, under pressure. playing out scenarios. it gave us a real slap in the face about how wrong some things can go, and especially if you're not prepared. wonderful professor. he was making probably 200k a year at his fulltime job, yet comes to my uni to teach. clearly he likes doing it, and it certainly has had a very positive effect on us.
then i thought about my other professors and man, so many of them were just great. i would love to come back as a TA and eventually teach a class in this degree. that is definitely one of my goals.
All in all, this year I've been quite successful. started off at a job i really wanted to leave, making shit money. And then:
- started off at a job i really wanted to leave, making shit money
- got my network+
- got my security+
- got my ITIL-F
- had a nice period of unemployment where i got to enjoy life again and escape the 9-6 grind
- passed the CISSP exam
- learned excellent interview skills - this i am sure will help me in life
- got my driver's license
- got 4 job offers. one i'm working at now, and i'm leaving it for deloitte. deloitte is virtually doubling the salary of my property management job
- got my master's in cybersecurity with a 3.96GPA
I laid in bed and teared up a bit. I'm really going to miss going to class and even doing the assignments. My class was the shit too. Diverse, great group of classmates. We were a cohort, which meant we took all 10 classes together (well i had the 1st one waved). Sometimes we had some other people in our class, and at one point we had the choice of an elective so some of us split for just one class. We'll be meeting up for drinks next month at some point.
i'm going to miss this year. my ultimate goal was to get a well paying cybersec job, and i got just that. but forget about the goal... i think i enjoyed the journey more than i'll ever enjoy this goal. i'm very sad that my degree is over.