Journal #14 - Where do I go from Here?

                Before taking CIS 115, I knew that I wanted to do something with computer networking because it is what I did for the United States Army for 4 years and it is what I studied in college before I joined the military.  I enjoyed the experience I had with the Army building computer networks and brainstorming of new Information Technology methods.  This class gave me the insight to go deeper into the computer networking field and study Cyber Security.  It seems that Cyber Security is a major topic of discussion in today's society and I would like to go more in dept with it while attending Kansas State University.  Cyber Security experts are in high demand with the government, and this is the reason why the government has poured a lot of money into the Cyber Security Department at K-State.   This money allows the university to give out grants and scholarships to students who want to peruse a degree in cyber security.  As one of these students who is interested, I want to take advantage of this opportunity in the semesters to come.  The Cyber Security Department is small at K-State and so that means that I would have a lot of quality time in class to share my thoughts and ideas with the professor and my peers.  I will get the opportunity to build a professional relationship with my professor and my peers and this will make the knowledge easier to grasp and working on projects easier.

                After I graduate from K-State, I would like to be a hacker and work for the government.  I think being a hacker would be an adventurous career and no two days will be alike.  I will use all of the knowledge that I would have learned from the Cyber Security Department at K-State to outsmart the enemy and come up with new and innovating ways to stop and neutralize the threat.  I will hack the government's own network system to find exploits that the enemy can use and fix them so they are no longer a threat.  I have fought on the front lines before when I was deployed in Iraq, and I have a feeling the next World War will be fought will be in cyberspace.  I will be on the front lines again, but instead of staring at the battlefield from iron sights I will be staring at it from a computer monitor.