Hannah 1

David Hannah

IB HL English

Mrs. Casady

May 20, 2022

What will my future after GOHS look like?

University

I plan on attending the University of California Riverside if I don’t get off the waitlist for

the University of California San Diego. I intend to live in a campus dorm for at least the first

year of University then, most likely commute from home until my graduation. However, if I do

get accepted to UCSD then I would live with my Dad’s very close friend who has been trying to

rent out a part of hist place in San Diego that is pretty close to the University. I am pretty much

set on working towards a computer science degree. I also plan on joining some clubs and

forming a lot of new relationships.

Career

I would like to work in the realm of Cybersecurity after getting my bachelor's in

Computer Science because I have always been intrigued by the capabilities of computers and the

internet. Since I was young, my Dad has worked in the area of cybersecurity for a long time and

has always been willing to have conversations with me about various topics like encryption,

phishing, or cross-site scripting just to name a few, sometimes spanning for hours at a time

(usually because the original question leads to many more questions). I also participate in

‘Capture the flag’ events which are basically simulations of situations where there is a vulnerable
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system that needs to be successfully exploited to find the ‘flags’ needed to win. While I do most

of these by myself, through the Cyber Patriots club, I got to experience participating with a team

made up of my close friends. In the first event, we ended up placing first overall in the Inland

Empire California Mayor’s Cyber Cup event, even beating all the college teams that participated!

In the second event, we placed top 25 for high schools and top 150 overall out of 2600+ teams

across the United States in the Nationcal Cyber League event (NCL). This was a great

experience for me because I really enjoyed working through the problems with the others that

sometimes took more than three hours to solve. I bring these events up because they gave me a

hint of what it would be like to work as a penetration tester and I enjoyed it quite a bit, even

though it was a grind.

Priorities

My ultimate priority for the next three to four years will be graduating university. My

main priority for the couple months after that will be finding a decent job. My priorities for the

following years will be maintaining my relationships and making new ones with others, gaining

financial independence and security and also learning.