Introduction: 

My experience within the Cybersecurity program has been a wonderful experience. I’ve been able to learn many new things about the cyber world that I can definitely take and implement in future jobs. ODU in general has been a great experience for me, from my advisors, to my teachers, and the students, this school excelled in all aspects. Some skills I needed to value the most from pretty much every class I took were time management, motivation, and writing skills.

Program Reflection: 

To me the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had from my time at ODU have been the very few online Zoom classes I’ve had. Those in my opinion were my favorite classes due to the increased feeling of engagement those classes had. Since I am an online student, it is hard to feel that deep connection sometimes when you’re never really engaging with your professors like that. I didn’t really have a lot of obstacles I encountered during my time, everything was pretty straight forward from my degree path and what classes I need to take, to the classes themselves and what they were about, even small things like how to find out how to pay tuition was quite easy and straightforward for me. I believe my previous time at Northern Virginia Community College helped me as I was already used to how things in college function from that experience.

IDS 493 Reflection: 

IDS 493 in simple terms is a class dedicated to yourself. It’s all about creating a portfolio that best describes who you are and what you can bring to the table. This portfolio can be helpful towards employers who are looking to hire you and want to learn more about you. The most interesting concepts I learned during this class have been things like making sure you have good navigation and layout to your portfolio as well as making sure your landing page causes people to want to read more. I am most proud of the amount of details I wrote in each of my pages. I feel like people who have no clue what I am talking about in any page they go into can leave knowing a lot more after reading my pages and that is something I think I did particularly well in. On top of that I feel like my page layouts were great as well. I believe with more time I can improve the design of my portfolio. It still looks pretty bland and would definitely incorporate more photos into my portfolio as well.

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, I loved this course just like I loved everything about ODU and the Cyber Security program as a whole. I feel like once I graduate I am suited for going into an entry-level cybersecurity role and excelling! Some connections I was able to make about many courses were how many of my classes focused on cyber economics as well as political and social effects of increased technology in today’s society and why cyber security is fundamental for our future. It is important to be an interdisciplinary thinker in my field of study because we need to be able to think critically and know how much mistakes that can lead to data breaches can affect many different sections of our everyday lives. After ODU I plan on continuing to work at my current job as an Enterprise Applications Engineer while studying to take my Network+ and Sec+ exams. Soon I’m moving as well but I think after that would be a great time to change my job and go from currently doing something in the IT field to working in the Cyber Security field, do something like being a security analyst or incident responder.