After my discussion with my instructor, I had decided to take this step. The step that not a lot of people are willing to take. I decided that transitioning to a new career was the best thing for me to do.

It's one thing to say that I'm going to transition to a new career, but it's a whole other thing to actually do it. The only way that this was going to work is to be prepared, and understand one thing : I won't learn everything in one day. The process of learning is something I was going to need to get comfortable with. My first step in learning was to take a flight to Seattle to attend my first cybersecurity conference, FutureCon.

One of the last things my instructor did with my introduction cohort was to invite us to FutureCon, which he was a keynote at. If any of us could make it, let him know. Before the class ended, I had purchased my flight to Seattle. I decided that it was worth it to fly almost 800 miles to simply learn more about this industry.

I was incredibly nervous about doing this. Firstly, Students weren't allowed at this conference. Secondly, I have never been to a conference like this, in an entirely different career field no less. I needed a strategy that would actually lead me to learning. A strategy that would lead to making connections and getting advice.

My strategy was to ask as many questions as possible, to EVERYONE. When I say everyone, I literally mean it. If there were 20 booths there, I went up to everyone, introduced myself and asked a series of questions about their work and what they do. In this situation, I wanted to avoid asking questions on my own behalf, and wanted to truly learn what these folks did, or what their company was doing. Once I asked those questions, people started asking me questions, like what the heck was I doing there? Where was I from? What do I do?

When you approach people with a genuine curiousness and willingness to learn about what they do; they will be more willing to ask you about yourself. The reception I got from people that were at that conference was awesome. I was so nervous to even be there, but once I got to talking, that all went away. I got out of my own head and began to learn more about some of the people in this industry. People were willing to lend their advice, even feed me some questions to ask others, and connect on LinkedIn.

This trip was a pivotal point in my journey. I got a glimpse into what life might be like after I get into this field. My attitude towards this process began to shift from "Can I do this?" to "I can do this!"

The trip allowed me to lean into my strengths and really see what I was capable of. My strengths are in building relationships and having genuine conversations with people. This strength of mine could lead me to opportunities down the road, but for now; I needed to return home with a strategy to learn about this industry and continue to better my skills because there are plenty of extremely talented and intelligent individuals in this field so I needed to close the gap.

This was definitely a turning point for me. I had a ton of motivation and excitement towards this process, and was ready to get to work. I came up with a learning schedule full of free online courses, and the coursework I was already enrolled in. I finally felt excited and motivated for the future.

The path isn't always linear though, and I found that out the hard way. Even with a plan in place, the journey wasn't always going to be easy.

In the next post, I will discuss my strategy specifically and where I feel like I went right and where I went wrong.

Thank you for reading!