Go, 'Lopes!

I decided that I didn't have enough sports teams to root for, so I decided I would adopt the Antelopes of Grand Canyon University as my representative team to root for in the WAC. Just to show how much I support the 'Lopes, I decided I would enroll in GCU. Rather than go for a third bachelor's degree in some other field that has nothing to do with the actual work I do, I decided I would change things up and go for a master's in something that I can actually use, Information Assurance and Cybersecurity.  Having done voting machines, then credit cards and now securing government systems, I somehow fell ass-backwards into a career where information assurance and cybersecurity has played a large part of my job the last fifteen years.

When I went to Northwestern I never could have imagined that my career would have turned out like this. The Internet was something that existed only so much as it connected the Department of Defense and universities and Matthew Broderick when he wanted to play a nice game of chess. The World Wide Web as we know it now didn't exist at all. I was going to be a journalist, and in my freshman year the TA scoffed at my essay that asserted that relatively soon people would be getting their news on their computers. "No one's going to want to carry their computer on the El." Boy, did I show him!

I like computers, I like solving problems, and I like solving problems with computers. As much as I wish now that I had become an astronaut, I fell into a career that has suited me. I also feel now like my career path has opened back up. At Nordstrom, particularly in the last year, I felt like my career path had closed up tighter than an earthworm's butthole in January. I am an ambitious person and not used to sitting in the same role for four years. I love feeling now like I have the chance to build on myself while helping to build a new organization at RVCM. I love feeling like I have the chance to advance in that organization without someone having to die first.

As I write this, I am watching GCU men's basketball team on their way to their fifteenth victory of the season. With Northwestern's basketball also having fifteen wins, will this be the year that I actually get to see not just one, but two of my schools in the Big Dance? March madness indeed!