“What good is it to have a belly if there’s no fire in it? Wake up, drink your passion, light a match and get to work.”
— Simon Sinek

When I decided to get into cybersecurity, I kept hearing the same thing over and over:
“Start with helpdesk. Work your way up. Then think about red teaming later.”

I get it. That’s the route a lot of great professionals took. But what happens when curiosity doesn’t wait for permission? I’m not working in the field yet, and I’m not the type to sit around waiting for the “right time” to start building skills.

My education hasn’t been entirely self-taught either. I attended Lincoln Technical Institute, where I learned the fundamentals of hardware and software. Basically everything covered in CompTIA A+ and got hands-on experience through labs and assignments. On top of that, I earned the Google Technical Foundations and Cybersecurity certificates and completed Ethical Hacking courses that gave me experience using Kali Linux and its security tools. The Google certs might not be the biggest names in the industry, but they gave me a solid base of knowledge and the confidence to keep pushing forward. Right now, I’m studying for CompTIA Security+ to strengthen that foundation even more and earn my first industry-recognized certification.

Along the way, I’ve taken a learn-by-doing approach. I’ve built isolated labs, detonated malware samples, programmed IoT devices for my own projects, learned Python, solved CTFs, and built my own blog and GitHub portfolio to document everything I’ve discovered. My projects came before the certifications. Not due to arrogance or a desire to skip ahead, but because I wanted to understand how things really work. I wanted to see how threats behave, not just read about them in a textbook.

I know this approach raises eyebrows. Some professionals think if you haven’t “paid your dues” in IT, your work doesn’t count. But cybersecurity is evolving. The same internet that produces new attacks also gives us open tools, safe environments, and entire communities where anyone can learn responsibly if they’re willing to put in the time. I am. Every free second of my life is dedicated to this craft.