Lesley Carhart May 1, 2023

I have to let you all in on something.

At this point in my career I’m privileged to mentor a lot of young people, especially veterans and college students. And every so often they’re like really excited to meet me and say they would like to be like me. This totally blows my mind because they go to like MIT, Stanford, or Purdue ….and they’re usually in the second year of a PHD and they run their cybersecurity competition team and speak 9 languages or something….

I was a TERRIBLE youth. Yea, I eventually went to DePaul which is respectable and I have three okay undergrad degrees - merely because I had no choice but to enlist at 17 and the military kicked the crap out of me. I went to community college first the hard way around. I almost didn’t graduate from high school. I was a miserable, unhappy, uncool gnc goth kid who hacked computers and swore a lot. Those schools would have .blown their noses at my application and probably banned me from the campus for being a delinquent.

What I want to say is if you’re one of those rock star young people, I’m super impressed by you, and you’ve picked one hell of a role model. Keep it up, and don’t burn out.

If you’re that totally screwed up teenager, though, I might not get to see you at awards ceremonies and touted by the top professors at cons, but you can make it too. Even if nobody is ever in your corner.

Show threadMichael Olsen

@hacks4pancakes there are so many wonderful replies and stories on here, it's been the most touching thing I've read all day!

As someone whose high school GPA was a 2.2, and who got an advanced professional degree only to abandon the field 10+ years later to start over in infosec; I want to add my voice to this chorus.

Don't let anyone tell you what you CAN'T do. I was told I wasn't smart enough in school and math specifically to have a career in computers. Computers were my true love ever since I was a teen and I was young and impressionable and that feedback from multiple sources was crushing. I took another path because of that feedback. I don't necessarily regret my path, but I wasn't as true to myself as I should have been at that critical juncture, and it's had unfortunate consequences over the years.

I'm so happy to be true to myself as I turn 40 this year and grateful for the people, like you Lesley, who've gone out of their way to tell me I CAN work in this field!

May 1, 2023 at 1:59amWeb