Nazily's Success Story

In Nazily's own words:

Nazily is a current Computer Science major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with an interest in Cybersecurity. This interest led him to take part in our Cybersecurity Program and he says he ended up staying because, "...the talks were very informative and I enjoyed learning new things after coming to each session". He initially anticipated a realm of confusing topics and projects to be thrown at him. He stated how, "I was expecting super tech guys to talk about things I would have no clue about and be confused out of my mind. However, to his surprise, he says that, "Lucky enough they were normal tech guys who only confused me SOME of the time, and I really learned a lot from them".

Nazily unfortunately stumbled across a few challenges, including his initial feelings of nervousness and discouragement. He recalls how, "The two main challenges I encountered early on were getting up super early and understanding what was being taught since it was something I had not learned before. I was kind of nervous".

However, that did not stop Nazily. He ended up overcoming these obstacles and learning instead of fearing what he did not know. He says that, "I remember our discussion on revision control systems with Exerceo and I had never used a repository before, I had no idea what Git was either. That did not discourage me though, I listened to the revision control talk about how they enabled codesharing, revisions, and updates much easier and currently I have actually been using Git to store and share my personal projects. It was cool for me how something I had no idea about a few months prior I am now using to a competent extent, and I can thank the working groups for that!" He also mentioned his favorite aspects of the program, including how the discussions where things were written on the dry erase board helped him better understand what someone is trying to convey. He says, "Personally for me I like to visualize what I am learning. It makes things easier to understand for me if I can see what someone is trying to convey". He gained a lot out of the discussions, as he discovered, "Much of what I thought I was going to learn turned out to be something I was not only fascinated about, but also something that, with little knowledge, I could understand which was cool".

Nazily is a Sophomore at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and through his experience at Exerceo, he has garnered attention from his peers and caused questions to arise during his studies. He expresses how, "I love explaining all the cool things I got to learn and experience!" He reflects on what he gained from his experience, which he explains as, "After the program I had a better appreciation for industry tactics and standards and it allowed me to have a strong foundation and understanding before I tried using them, like Git for example, which helped me a ton".