I'm Done Waiting for Someone to Give Me Experience
I graduated college in 2019, and for the next few years, I bounced around in service and client-facing jobs.
Onboarding coordinator. Account manager. Sales.
Different companies, different titles, but underneath it all, it was pretty much the same thing: talk to people, manage accounts, solve problems, hit numbers.
Here's the part that took me a while to see.
Technology had always been there. Looking back, I realize I'd always had a strong interest and honestly a natural talent for this stuff.
I grew up glued to the family computer. I'd drag home other people's old electronics and e-waste just so I could take them apart and see how they worked. I'd tear apart RC cars. I deconstructed and upgraded our family PCs. When I was a kid, I'd find scripts online so I could mod my PSP and get it running homebrew.
I was always messing with something.
Even at work, I was usually the person people came to when something wasn't working. I'd troubleshoot a computer, figure out why some piece of software wasn't behaving, or help someone solve a problem before they bothered putting in an IT ticket.
But I didn't really start taking the idea of technology as a career seriously until around 2022.
That's when I decided to actually pursue it.
I started my Master's degree in Cybersecurity in 2022 and spent the next two years building the theoretical foundation I thought I needed to make the transition. In 2024, I graduated with my Master's and earned my CompTIA Security+ certification while working full-time.
I had the degree.
I had the certification.
So I started applying…
And applying…
Annnnnd applying…
For the better part of the last two years, I've been trying to land that first real IT or cybersecurity role.
And I haven't.
At first, I thought the answer was that I needed to learn more. Maybe another certification. Maybe another course. Maybe I just wasn't qualified enough yet.
But eventually I started noticing the same problem over and over again.
Experience.
Even the entry-level jobs wanted experience.
It became pretty obvious that I could spend the next two years collecting certifications and still have the same problem. I had built a theoretical foundation, but I didn't have much I could point to and say, "Here's what I've actually done."
And that's where I think I've been looking at this the wrong way.
I've been waiting for someone to give me the experience I need to get the job that requires experience.
So I'm going to create the experience myself.
That's what this project is going to be about.
I'm going to build things, break things, troubleshoot them, rebuild them, and document the entire process.
I've already got a starting point.
About a year ago, I built a home lab out of an old gaming PC. I currently have it set up running Proxmox with virtual machines for Windows Server, Kali Linux, Windows 10, and Splunk. I've used it to experiment and learn, but I never really documented what I was doing.
That changes now.
I'm going back through the lab piece by piece and documenting how everything is set up, what I'm learning, what breaks, and how I fix it.
And eventually, I'll build more complicated projects on top of it.
I want someone looking at my resume to be able to do more than see a Master's degree and a Security+ certification. I want them to be able to click a link and see the things I've actually built.
Here's where all of this will live:
This site: Full project write-ups, from start to finish, including the things that went wrong.
GitHub: Code, configurations, scripts, and notes.
Medium: Cross-posted write-ups for anyone who happens to find them there.
LinkedIn: Shorter updates as projects come together.
I don't know exactly where this is going to lead.
But I know that continuing to send applications into the void and hoping someone eventually decides I'm experienced enough isn't a strategy.
So I'm going to build the experience myself.
Maybe that's the part I should have been doing all along.
First project post coming soon: a full tour of my home lab.
