A Professional Certificate for an Unqualified Layman

I was on a break! But I didn’t cheat on myself, so it was great. Now I’m ready to patch up with myself again I guess .

Kudos guys! I’m glad I’m not dead. (P.S. these aren’t suicidal thoughts, don’t worry, just some self-deprecating humour I think). Anyways, the month has come to an end and I know I haven’t been blogging as much as I would have liked to. But yeah, I had my reasons. They were manifold (). Man, I’ve got to hold back on these PJs.

So, just before the last post for experimentalism, I wound up enrolling for this lovely program offered by Google called “Google IT Support.” I noticed that it was kind of an easy professional certification and it was offered for free on Coursera. I had no formal education in the field of IT till then, although, I had visited a few subreddits and tried “hacking” via the assistance of crazy and shady YouTubers. The driving reason for taking up the course was to learn more about the different parts of computing and networking that I had always wanted to know more about. Thus began a journey.

The course takes almost about 6 months if you go at the recommended pace (I often find recommended paces on Coursera to be too slow, but ya, that’s my opinion). Thus, I decided to challenge myself and see if I could complete the whole course within two months. To my huge disbelief, I completed it in just a month! It was so awesome and enlightening that I barely stopped watching the videos or googling about all the crazy new stuff that I found out everyday.

I guess some of you might be eager to know about what I learnt from the program. There were 5 courses, the first was kind of an overview of the IT industry as a whole. The next course focused on computer networking. This was my favourite course, I learnt a lot about the OSI model, how data travels from computers to other computers and over the internet, and a lot more about computer networks. I bet I can destroy your internet browsing experience via DNS problems if I get a hold of your PC . The next course was on Operating Systems, I really loved the hands on part of the course. I learned how to format disks, how to download and install an OS, how to browse an OS, install programs, search through logs, shut down processes and many more things.

The next course was mostly a sys admin course, where I learned how to apply all that I had learned over a fleet of machines at ones, administering computers remotely, setting up user accounts and passwords, managing access to resources, installing software over a fleet of machines, LDAP, Active Directory and a few more things. The last course dealt with computer security. It was basically a learning experience about the contemporary security measures taken by companies, how data is encrypted, how files are stored and protected, using public key cryptography, digital signatures and many more things. Although I wanted the last course to be a bit more hands-on just like the OS course, it wasn’t. And it is understandable, the course is meant for everyone, even a simple layman. What I wanted out of it was to learn to actually implement contemporary cryptography. Probably a task for another time.

I completed the course and the next thing I did was imagined myself getting a job at Google and leading a luxurious life, till reality knocked at my door. I had to register for my next “online” semester at college and start my thesis project with proper dedication.

After countless hours of procastinating the downfall of my joys, I undertook the painful journey of literature review. I’m still stuck on it, trying to figure out what the brainy people before me wrote and what little I can hopefully contribute to their learnings.

What are you upto?