Refining the Vision

So, as with most things, this journey into a new career has not been straightforward. I am not going to pretend, seeing the way that markets have been up-ended in the last couple of weeks has me so nervous to even think about leaving the classroom. Yes, teacher and administrator cuts sometimes happen. But in the past, I have more or less been able to avoid those by being the most qualified person in the room (figuratively, of course). By diversifying my certifications in the educational field, I could always serve for another content area, take on a different grade level, or pivot in administration to another role.
The “real” world feels so much more scary.

In addition to that, I have been trying to figure out exactly how I want to proceed. I started teaching myself how to code because I knew it was a valuable skill that would set me up for success. But I hadn’t been 100% clear on what I wanted to be able to use Python to be able to do. In fact, that lack of direction almost had me quit over the past month and resign myself to staying in education even though this career no longer makes me feel good about myself or about the future of our city, state and country.

But, I trusted the process. After a few weeks of sorting through my feelings, my understandings, my knowledge and my future goals, I started to get a better picture of how to proceed. I have continued to teach myself Python—I’m mastering loops at the moment!—and have also decided that with my skills and background I’m most interested in the field of cyber threat intelligence, specifically in the role as an analyst. I decided to use tryhackme.com to learn the skills and have decided to go back to school for a degree in computer science.

I think it’s notable that this isn’t just a straight and narrow decision to choose one career over another. It’s been a lot of stepping into different fields, examining what gets done in the day to day and deciding if that’s how I want to spend my time until I retire. I’m actually really thankful for the journey, because even though I could later choose to switch careers again, I’m really hoping to choose a field and stay there for a long, long time.

But every day is a new day forward, a new lesson to learn, a new start. So here I go onward!