College Graduation

The day is finally here. I know this is what I’ve been working towards for four years, or more realistically, since like middle school, but it still doesn’t feel real. College graduations seemed to be this thing that happened to those older than me, and it didn’t really register that one year it would be my turn.

Since freshman year spring I’ve been making small blog posts here, and it’s insane to look back at where I started. I came into college with almost 0 coding experience. I kind of knew what my declared major was, but I didn’t really understand what cybersecurity as a career looked like. One fall day my freshman year, I cold messaged an upperclassman on CCDC on LinkedIn asking if they had time for a coffee chat. And that’s where everything started to snowball. Joining CCDC, WiCyS conference, TAing for an MIT Beaverworks cyberscurity course, being a SOC analyst at Draper, cyberforce and pentesting competitions, starting CTF club, being a security engineer at Benchling and Klaviyo, 2 CCDC national competitions, DEFCON, and all while taking classes in systems security, forensics, cyberlaw, network security, wireless security, linux malware, and more.

They say college is the best four years of your life. And while I hope that isn’t true, it definitely has been a pretty damn good four years.