Milestones
11 years ago, I graduated High School and made my way into the wide world.
6 years ago, the winding journey that took me through studies in Pre-Med and Psychology led me to a Intro to C Programming Class.
2 years ago, I spent a life-changing six months interning at Intel Security, got exposed to a side of computing I’d never considered, and found a new vision for my career.
Yesterday, I passed the final Final Exam of my undergraduate career. It’s been a long wait, and frankly doesn’t quite feel real yet. But this milestone marks the end of a significant phase of my life, and the start of a journey into Possibility-land.
The Vision
My interests within computer science are almost as varied as my experiences outside the field, and finding out what path works for me will have to be an active process of walking it. Long term, I want to get involved in the Security community. The opportunity to be involved in something so active and important is an opportunity I can’t pass up. I don’t know yet what I want that to look like, as far as doing malware research, machine learning, penetration testing, or something else; and I definitely have some skills to build yet before I get there. But skill building is a perk as far as I’m concerned, and there’s no point being picky about the path as long as I can meet my goals (speaker at DEFCON, here I come!).
In the short term, I have a couple different directions I’m keen to investigate.
- Web and Mobile: I have thoroughly enjoyed all my class projects that have been in this sphere, and even did the full stack for a simple internal tool on one of my internships; though in hindsight, web.py wasn’t an ideal choice. Most recently I worked on a note-taking application called SubNotes as a capstone project (check it out on GitHub), where I got to learn a lot more about the React ecosystem, and I’m excited to continue working on it.
- Open Source: While at Oregon State University, I took a course on Free and Open Source Software from Carlos Jensen. It was a great intro into how open source projects work and why they’re so important, and Prof. Jensen’s immense passion for the subject was infectious. I genuinely enjoy what I’m doing, so working on Open Source Software is a valuable way to not only enhance my career but also to maintain my technical and critical thinking skills into retirement.
- Dev Ops: This is a relatively new interest for me. While reflecting on my internships and coursework, I realized that the times I felt most engaged, creative, and useful were when I was helping and supporting my team, not necessarily when I was working on a deliverable. Next thing I knew, I kept seeing references to DevOps everywhere, only to discover that team support is more or less what DevOps engineers do! Maybe there’s more to it than I know about, and I certainly intend to do more investigation, but I certainly feel like it’s a promising path.
Next Steps
People always say it’s all about who you know, not what you know, but then they don’t bother going out and getting to know more people, let alone using the network they’ve already built. First steps for me are to start reaching out; I have a lot of investigation ahead of me as far as narrowing down what things I should be investigating and how I should go about doing that. Gleaning wisdom from those who have gone before me is the best chance I have at being successful and achieving something of significance.
That said, I do have some plans I can implement right away, mostly in service to those short-term goals.
- The Dreaded Resume: An essential part of getting out into the world is, of course, having an updated CV/Resume. Most people I’ve talked to consider this a terrible chore. I can’t say I love it, but finding cool things like JSON Resume certainly inject an element of excitement and engagement into the process.
- React Modules: One of the great and terrible things about the React ecosystem is the use of components. As a design philosophy it works wonders, and the great wealth of components available can really save time and work. But that variety can make choosing difficult, and that’s assuming one of the choices fits your needs at all. Some of my work on SubNotes could have been filled by component modules, but none that I found quite fit my needs, so I rolled my own. I intend to split some of that work off into modules I can share with the community, see if I can address some of the concerns I had with other modules I found, and ultimately share my work with the React community.
- Personal Ideas: Although I’ve been able to work on a number of cool projects, I have several personal ideas that never quite gained traction as class projects. They’ve been bouncing around in my head, waiting for me to give them some love and attention, and now that wait can be over. Maybe one of those ideas will seed the next great startup; won’t know until I try!
- Open Source Bonanza: I would love to be contributing to more open source projects. But, of course, it’s hard to contribute to something and be part of the community if you don’t use it. I’m a tinkerer at heart, so my hope with my personal projects, and just with my computer use in general, is to start exploring open source solutions for everything I’m doing, and to let that use drive my journey into becoming a contributor.
A Bright Future
One of my mentors taught me a valuable lesson: fear and faith are the same thing. Both are a belief and trust in something that hasn’t happened yet. Every situation we find ourselves in, we are presented with a choice to believe something great will happen, or something terrible.
For years now, all my opportunities, goals, and wishes have been locked away in the box of “When I’m done with school,” fleeting vapors that are a nice thought, but keep slipping through my fingers. Now that time has come, all those things have come into sharp focus, tangible possibilities I can see and strive for.
This is my moment. The fear of the unknown that we all face, that kept us from being something else’s lunch in the distant past, is waiting on the sidelines to lead me into comfort and mediocrity.
BUT: I choose to have faith in myself and my abilities. I don’t know what milestone comes next, but whatever form it takes, I know I’m going to be moving on and moving up. Greatness awaits!