As I finish my bachelor's in Network Administration and in Information Security at Davenport University, I start to realize that perhaps I chose the wrong college. During my short time at this school, I have only found a handful of challenging courses. Most of the time, I just sit in class wondering when the instructor will get to the nifty details. I sit there waiting, and waiting, and waiting.... And as you can guess, I'm still waiting.
I feel like all my classes gave me information smashed, condensed, prepackaged, and with no flavor. I was only presented with the surface of networking, network defense, databases, computer security, encryption, professional writing, project management, computer forensics and wireless security, among others. Besides the lack of labs on many classes, I also felt that some basic concepts were emphasized in every class and never in detail. This took time away from the meat of the classes -- that is, when there was any. I think The Mentor put this in some very nice words over two decades ago in The Conscience of a Hacker:
"You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were prechewed and tasteless."
It's too bad that over 20 years later, a post-secondary institution specializing in technology and belonging to a world super power still has not learned this lesson.
So now, as I am sitting in my database design class, I can only say: I am so bored! I need more challenge! I want to learn more! I need better tools! Come on, Davenport, where is the meat?!!!