The year is 2014. I’ve just joined university to study a BSc in Computer Security and Forensics. Not many universities were offering the course at that time, so many people back in my village were of the thought that I should get a local college instead. Almost no one knew about the course itself, except that it had the word “Computer” in it.
How I decided on the course? Glad you asked…
I have to take you back to my primary school years. Back then, I was a master of the Science subject specifically. I remember my teacher always using me as an example. I mean, I loved how stuff works. Things like how plants make food, how food gets digested, you get the picture.
Towards my end of my years, I was made the school head prefect. This meant more time for me to wander around dong inspections and all.
Then I discovered the computer room…
Our computer teacher, Miss Stella, was a beautiful lady, but I fell in love with computers instead. I was fan of the 3D Pinball game and another one where you could put colors into houses, flowers, etc. can’t recall the name. In my head I knew my career had to be in tech.
Detour, as a kid, I used to assemble these broken radio parts one of my nephews had collected. We’d create beat-up radio systems from them. It was fun.
In secondary school, we were introduced to a system of ‘choosing’ the subjects we want to continue taking. That was after two years of learning them anyways. I had been introduced to another subject, “Electricity“. This one was a real deal. We could perform live electrical installations, from the meter box to wiring a house, to assembling the electric motor of an electric drill. The computer classes we took, at least for me, were too ‘shallow’. We would learn Excel functions mostly, how they are complex and useful, and other short stories.
I had already perfected Excel before this, so I didn’t find any ‘fun’ repeating it, so when it came to choosing the subjects, I chose Electricity over Computer. Towards my third year of high school, I was sure my career lay in one of two places: Electrical Engineering or ICT. ICT was the main umbrella where all computer related courses were thought to be under.
During the final year, before the final exam, we had a session to fill out our preferred universities and courses. This was the icing on the cake. Mine were already made up. All my choices were either a course in Electricity of ICT related. That’s how I landed my slot to do Computer Security and Forensics, a relatively new course locally back then, but really competitive abroad.
For my case I remembered when I received the letter to join the course people was like, “so you will be a watchman for computers”.