The happiest time in my life was high school. It was really where I found my interest in computers. I transferred from a bad high school in order to boost my GPA and enter a better high school. I stayed friends with a lot of people from my first high school and most of them I’m still really close with. The high school I got in to specialized in certain careers like computer networking. It gave us extra classes that helped the student get certifications on to of our diplomas. I spent the 3 years in this new high school trying my best to be one of the best of my computer networking classes. I found them to be fun but did it because everything was treated as a competition in the class. Even the grade or score we got on certifications was ranked in all classes and grades in classes were given depending on them.

In my final year or senior year of high school I meet with the senior computer networking teacher and earned a spot on his cybersecurity competition team.

I had zero knowledge on the competition even towards the end I didn’t really know what I was really doing. I expected more from a senior level teacher. He gave me thousands of pages of material to use towards winning the competition but nothing was ever taught by him. Although the competition was probably the most fun thing I have done. I got to work as a team to competition on a national level. The coolest part was going against military academies or professionals. Although we could never beat them we were able to get a score close to them but at a slower pace. The competition recorded the points obtained at a certain time and the time taken to finish each stage of the competition and puts it up as a leaderboard against other teams. My favorite part bouncing ideas off others on the competition and eating food with the team while working out each stage. Spending 3-4 hours after school towards our goal.