The biggest turning point in my life took place in eighth grade while playing the popular computer game, Minecraft. Yes, Minecraft, the pixely game about blocks. In seventh grade, Minecraft was insanely popular. My friends and I would create worlds and share them with one another. We would spend hours staring at our screens, absorbed in our virtual kingdoms. Eventually, we discovered the online multiplayer system. There were hundreds of people on these Minecraft servers creating, destroying, building, and fighting. The players there were way more skilled than us and rather rude. My friends did not like playing here, but I enjoyed the challenge. I logged in after school, sometimes playing for hours. I practiced. I fought. As I became a more …show more content…
As the term was used more frequently, I started to learn that this concept was real and frankly frightening. A DDOS attack meant a distributed denial of service attack, causing one’s Minecraft character to disconnect from the server and drop everything they had for the other players to steal. The fact that someone could use the machine I do homework on to impact another person’s computer was fascinating to me. I asked about the DDOS attack and was told that one can “resolve” someone’s “IP” from their Skype name and use a “botnet” to take out their Wi-Fi. I figured this idea was too complicated to be true, so I ignored it and continued to play. Until one day I conflicted with the wrong person and spent the next 30 minutes without Wi-Fi. After that, I spent many hours researching how this was possible. I watched videos, read blogs, and joined many forums, trying to get a grasp on the topic. My goal: to never have my system compromised again. Through all my hard work, I became famous on the Minecraft server because no matter how agitated people became, they were not able to find my IP. I made it my business to help every player have the same protection, soon helping more than 20 people. From that point on, cyber-security became my passion. I am still blown away by everything a computer can do.
Transitioning from middle school to high school now college. Hardships and victories I have experienced it all. I have gone from the shy student to one of the most involved and active student in my school.
My life was suddenly changing right before one of the biggest changes: high school. I had more things to worry about than other high schoolers. I had to figure out how I was going to get home, how I was going to get the house clean before my mom got home, how I was going to get dinner started, all on top of getting my homework done. Due to this, I wasn’t as serious with my grades. I let them fall even though I knew I could do better. I was just way too busy to focus on school when there were more important things to focus on- my family. I slowly found out how to balance everything to get my grades up. I had to learn how to balance my life to make myself happy while keeping up my
My life changing experience all began on June 3, 2014 when I was a Freshman in high school and things weren’t going the best. Struggles through high school are very common but for me I dealt with things I couldn’t even handle. I struggled relentlessly all through high school and with my home life as well , but I was never prepared for what happened that summer when I was 14.
I have become my own person. I have become more dependable and have a better understanding of knowing what is right and standing up for others. By having a job, this has also helped me to become who I am. Working has helped me to have a more positive attitude about life and have become a good problem solver. It has helped to start thinking about the future and starting to invest for it. Throughout high school I’ve also played many sports. Being part of a team has helped me to learn that everyone on the team is a leader and you have to be able to say positive and support your teammates even when you are
If I were to pick one academic "wake-up" call would during my 10th grade year where I barely made honor roll. Although I eventually made it though the year, I didn't achieve the goals I had set for myself. I learned a great skill from that moment on, time management. Managing so many things at once can be stressful but learning how to balance it all out in a given time is something I won't forget. Over the years I've grown more mature about my education and have learned to invest more time towards my future. I feel like I've come very far from when I started high-school, developing from a shy child to someone who is outgoing and can express themselves in the classroom as well as outside of school.
Throughout my teenage years I loved to play baseball. I was in different clubs, organizations, and teams. My whole life was dedicated to playing ball. Then things started to change going into my freshmen year, I started to get into computers. I decided to enroll into a computer class at Franklin high school. I started to learn a lot stuff about computers and also I was pretty good at it. Also at the time I was still managing to be in baseball. Then going into my senior year I had to choses in between being in baseball or going into computers. I knew going into computers will help me get a head start in my carrier. So I chose to go into computers and quit baseball. I thought I will never have to quit baseball my whole life. It was a very big significant event in my life but good things have come with it. I got three CompTIA certifications, paid for half of my
Every little mistake and success story in my high school years qualify as a factor to my personal change but by far the biggest experiences were definitely my efforts of maintaining a good GPA and the participation in the National Honor Society. Trying to achieve and keep up with my GPA was harder than it appeared but due to all the effort I can anticipate that whatever the future has in store for me I will be ready to endure. Not only was the experience of my GPA life-changing but it was also the door to bigger opportunities, one being the National Honor Society. Although I doubted myself almost every step of the way I can truthfully say the experience was transformative in the sense that it taught me morals I will cherish throughout the rest of my journey.
Time spent on server daily: I have around 4-5 hours after school depending on the afternoon. But on weekends I can be on for around 6-14 hours.
The biggest hurdle that I have overcome in the past was figuring out how to get a shot at an education without burying myself in debt. I joined the military, and over the course of my 8 year contract I gained valuable teamwork, technical, leadership, and interpersonal skills. Most importantly, I earned 3 years of GI Bill benefits that would pay me to get educated. After serving as an electrician, I started taking college courses in electrical theory, which did not interest or motivate me in the least. It was through curiosity that I started taking online courses to learn to code basic HTML and CSS. When I took my first intro to programming Computer Science course, I was absolutely hooked and intrigued by taking an idea, and coding it into something functional. Over the summer of 2016 I took a
Things really came around for me when I realized during the beginning of my junior year that my grades weren’t where I wanted them to be, so I made a conscious decision to be a better version of myself. I stopped being indifferent about school and put the same amount of effort I applied in sports to my everyday studies. Constantly improving my test and quiz scores just like my shooting percentage in basketball and my batting average in baseball. I took the same lesson my mom taught me and applied it to where it matters the most, in school.
Seventh grade was probably one of the biggest turning points for me. I told myself that I was going to educate myself more on feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Being home schooled, I had plenty of time to look up everything I needed to know about these two very important topics. A couple of weeks into the school year, I was asked to go to a football with some friends. While walking around, I heard someone that I knew say “dude, that’s so gay!” Before I realized what I was doing, I told him not to use that word as an insult. I felt so anxious, but at the same time I felt so happy about choosing to point it out. I now never feel nervous about pointing out a homophobic/sexist/racist comment.
Every individual has many turning points in their lifetime that shape their future. The turning points can be good or bad for that individual and that their life course into the new direction. In my life, I had many turning points that shaped my life such as getting my first job, immigrating to a new country, finding my life partner, and motherhood. All of these turning points of my life had the significant role in making me who I am today and I am glad I got to experience the change.
I asked about this DDOS attack and was told that you can get someone’s “IP” from their skype name and use a “botnet” to take out their Wi-Fi. I had no idea what an IP was much less a botnet. I figured this idea must just be too complicated for me, I put it aside and just continued to play my game, until one day when I mouthed off to the wrong person. I said one wrong word and was spending the next 30 minutes without any Wi-Fi, not just my computer but the Wi-Fi router itself would not function. After that day I spent all my time researching how this happened, I watched many videos, read many blogs, and joined many forums, trying to get a grasp at this topic. My goal was for my system to never be able to be taken down by these people ever again. With all my hard work I became famous on the Minecraft server because no matter how mad people got, they were not able to find my IP or even my newly installed VPN. My personal information was invisible to the other players and no longer did I have to worry about losing my items from a DDOS attack. I made it my business to help many other players have the same protection I did and pretty soon after I had helped more than 20 people hide their information from attackers. This is the week that sparked my interest in cyber-security and computers. To this day I am fascinated by everything a computer can do from hacking to calculating. Computers are the way of the future and it is important to be able to protect yourself on the internet. DDOS attacks are not nearly as severe as many internet crimes but it is one example of a way in which people can use this machine we use to browse the internet for evil purposes. Ever since that day, I have wanted to build a system that is not susceptible to any form of cyber-attacks and to help other people and businesses do the
Everyone has that one experience that makes them look at life with a new set of eyes. My life changing experience happened a little earlier than most. It was the summer before first grade. We had gotten an exceptional amount of rain in the past months even though it was summer. I did not notice, though, because summer was every six year old's favorite holiday, next to Christmas and their birthday. My summer was supposed to be like any other but it quickly took a turn. For the best or for the worst? That is debatable.
A life changing moment that happened to me was when I read a book cover to cover in just three days. In all honesty growing up I never enjoyed reading. Instead I always wanted to play outside with my friends. Every day I would come home from school and dart right back out the door so I would not miss anything. We would play a variety of sports like football, baseball, and basketball. It did not matter which we would choose. All that mattered was that I was not stuck inside my house reading. As a matter of fact in school I was not much of reader either, so I only read as much as I had too to complete an assignment. Then one day I was called down to the principal’s office during my senior year at Slippery Rock High school to have a chat with Mr. Jeffries, the head guy in charge. Little did I know that this visit to the principal’s office was going to change the way I looked at reading forever.