What I studied,
and what it actually taught me.

I did my B.S. in Information Science & Technology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, graduating in December 2025. Going in, I expected a fairly standard IT degree. What I actually got was a mix of networking, database design, systems analysis, and security — and it was the security coursework, specifically, that changed how I think about building software.

Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing was the class that did it. Once you've spent an evening finding your own way into a deliberately vulnerable machine, you can't un-know how fragile most systems are by default. That course, plus Information Security I & II and Network & System Administration, is why I don't just write code that works — I write code and then ask what happens when someone tries to break it.

I'm drawn to building things people actually use — web apps, mobile apps, the infrastructure behind them — because that's where the theory stops being theoretical. Database Systems and Systems Analysis taught me how to design something that scales; Data Analysis & Visualization taught me how to tell whether it's actually working. I like the full stack of that process, from a database schema to the interface someone taps on their phone.

If I'm honest about what the degree didn't give me: it's the production experience. That's part of why I built KwikJobs alongside my coursework — I wanted to know what it felt like to have real users depending on something I shipped, not just a graded assignment. It felt different. Harder, and more useful, than any single class.