Getting a Degree in One Year

                 For the last year, I haven’t had any projects to post about because I was focusing on getting a bachelor’s degree from Western Governor’s University (WGU). WGU is a completely online school that only offers degrees for business, technology, health and nursing and education because these degrees have a high employment rate. The school is competency based which means it lets you complete courses at your own pace as long as you can demonstrate that you know the material taught in the course while paying a flat fee for six months. This means, in theory, you could complete a whole bachelor’s degree in six months. When I first heard about WGU I thought it was too good to be true, but after some research I found that it was a legitimate accredited school. When you think about it, there are some students at universities who don’t attend class all semester, study the last week, pass the final and get credit for the course. Why not have a whole school that allows people to move at their own pace and get credit as long as they could pass the final exam or write the final paper? That made a lot of sense to me so I decided that I would attend WGU and pursue a bachelor’s in cybersecurity and information assurance.

                WGU has a lenient transfer policy, and because I already had a degree in criminal justice, all of my general credit requirements were met. Another unique aspect of WGU is many of the final exams for courses are third party certifications that WGU pays for and even gives you a free retest. For example, the Network and Security-Applications course’s final exam is CompTIA Security+. Once you get your Security+ you get credit for the class. If you come into the university already possessing certifications, you automatically get credit for those courses. Some certifications even satisfy more than one class (i.e. A+ covers two classes, IT Foundations, and IT Applications). Before I started, I already had CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+ and Project+ which immediately satisfied seven courses. This meant I only had seventeen courses in total to get my degree.

                My first class was Cyber Defense and Countermeasures. This course is aligned with the CompTIA CySA+ exam. Since I knew I was going to be attending WGU, I had been studying for this course for about six months before my term started. Usually when I study for a CompTIA test, I get a book to study with, then I get a video course to watch a few times, followed by some practice tests. The book I got for CySA+ was a little hard to follow. Once I finished the book, I bought the Jason Dion course on Udemy for CySA+, which was a good bit more helpful. Usually, these courses are sold for eighty or ninety dollars, but they go on sale every few weeks for about twenty bucks. I also got the Jason Dion practice tests, which were an excellent way to gauge how I was doing. I didn’t have to pay for the practice tests because at this point, I had started my term at WGU and the school gives you access to Udemy Business and you can get everything for free. Two weeks after the term started I took the exam and passed. The CySA+ exam really isn’t difficult if you’ve taken Security+. I thought the performance based questions were as very easy.

                Next, I took Introduction to IT. I found it odd that the school didn’t give me credit for this class, especially since I took an intro to IT class at my old school and CompTIA A+ seems like it would cover everything in this class. Pretty easy class after taking the certs that I had. It did provide an introduction to data management and scripting, which I thought was helpful.

My next course was Legal Issues in Information Security. This was another class I was surprised I didn’t get credit for because I took a class about legal issues in cyber already from my old school. This class was mostly writing a paper explaining legal issues. Since I had already taken a legal issues class, this one was pretty easy and only took me about a week.

The next class on my list was Emerging Technologies in Cybersecurity. This class had two projects I had to do and write papers on the projects including screen shots. This class only took a hand full of days because the two projects were using Wireshark and Nmap, both of which I had used before, making the projects pretty easy. I thought this class was one of the best courses in my program because you get hands on experience with technology.

Digital Forensics in Cybersecurity was my next class. This class had a test and a paper. Honestly, I did not enjoy this class very much, even though I finished it in about a week. I learned that I do not really want to be in forensics because all you are doing is sifting through evidence and seeing the worst of the worst people.

The next course was Business of IT-Applications. To pass this course all you have  to do is take and pass the ITIL Foundation Certification exam. I heard you only needed to schedule the test four hours in advance and then take it from home. I studied for about a day and a half before I felt ready for the test because most of it is either common sense or covered on CompTIA A+. I went online to take the test and found out that they didn’t have any available test times until the next week. So, I scheduled the test and began studying for my next course, while studying a little every day for the ITIL exam. I took the test and only missed one or two questions. Pretty easy course.

During my studying for ITIL exam I also started the Linux Foundations course which aligns with the LPI Linux Essentials exam. I already knew a little Linux, but to study for the exam I watched two short video courses on LinkedIn learning (also provided by WGU) and then scheduled the test. I took ITIL two days before the Linux exam so I did not have as much time to study as I would have liked. I barely passed the exam. If I had miss two more questions, I would have failed the exam. To be honest, one of my regrets from my degree is that I did not learn more Linux during this course and didn’t do as well on the test. Still, a pass is a pass.

Introduction to Cryptography was the next course and was honestly fairly boring. Again, this course only took about a week and wasn’t as difficult as it seemed at first glance. A lot of what is covered in this course is also covered during certifications like Security+ and CySA+ which gave me a pretty good advantage.

My next course was Information Systems Security which aligns with the Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) exam. I heard beforehand that this course was basically a long Security+ exam. I listened to a course on LinkedIn learning during a road trip. When I returned from the road trip I took the exam and it was just like I had heard, being a long version of Security+. I don’t remember what my score was (I don’t think they show you), but I passed after barely a week of studying.

Following Information Systems Security I took Managing Cloud Security. I rushed through this course and finished in one week. This class wasn’t the most familiar topic for me, but because most certifications touch on using the cloud it was not completely foreign. This class gives you a free voucher for the Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) once you complete the test, but I heard that it is a very difficult test and haven’t gotten around to attempting the exam.

At this point I was three months into my six month term and started Scripting and Programming-Foundations. At the same time, I had started my first job in IT. Up until this point I had been doing school full time. Now that I was working, I had less time to work on school. I was also unfamiliar with the topic. WGU uses something called Zybooks to teach the material for this class, which I do not really like as a learning tool. I ended up taking about a month to complete this class, and the test wasn’t that bad, being a mix of coding and multiple choice questions.

I moved on to Introduction to Programming in Python. This class was probably the most difficult class to complete. It took me two months to finish and ended my first term. I struggled a lot to learn everything the course entailed and once again WGU used Zybooks which didn’t really work for me. To be honest, I heard the final test was very similar to the practice test offered in the course. I spent about a week and half learning how to answer the questions on the practice test, then took the final. The final differed a good deal from the practice test, but it was similar enough and I knew enough python to adjust to solve the test problems. I ended up barely passing the course.

Managing Information Security was the next class and first of my second term. This class only took about a week because it only required an essay. The essay was pretty long, but because I had done Security+ and CySA+ the topic wasn’t that hard.

The next class was Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Analysis which aligns with CompTIA Pentest+. I had been watching Jason Dion videos for Pentest+ on Udemy since I finished Managing Cloud Security. I spent about three more weeks watching more of Jason Dion’s course and taking his practice tests. This was the most difficult CompTIA test I’ve taken so far. Pentesting is a really difficult subject to study for and take a multiple choice test about. I ended up passing the exam on the first try, but felt like I would fail the whole time during the test. The performance based questions were way more difficult than any others I had seen, which contrasted with the performance based questions on CySA+.

Data Management-Foundations and Data Management-Applications were my final two courses before the final capstone project. I couple these two classes together because they are basically the same class. The test for Foundations was all multiple choice, asking about SQL. The test for Applications was almost completely all solving problems with SQL. These two courses used Zybooks again, but for some reason were a lot easier for me. I thought SQL was a little more straight forward than Python and was pleasantly surprised by this class. I didn’t think I would enjoy SQL at all, but I found it kind of fun.

The final capstone is split into three parts. The whole idea behind the final is solving an IT related problem at a real or made up company. I made up a company and decided to implement a mobile device management program for it. The first part of the capstone is to get approval. Once I had that, I needed to plan how I would implement the project. The third and final part is a report on how it went. Since the company was made up, the whole thing was pretty easy. I was a little disappointed by the final project, I thought it would be a little more difficult, but I was happy when it was over.

And that’s it, that’s how I got a degree in one year. Overall, I enjoyed my experience at WGU and learning at my own pace makes a lot of sense to me. I think there are a few keys to success at WGU. One, before every class go to reddit and read about strategies to pass each class. Two, take the practice tests seriously; they help a lot. Three, don’t try to be fancy when writing essays, just follow what the outline says. And finally, find what works. For me, that’s usually getting on Udemy and watching a video course. I would definitely recommend WGU to just about anyone. It’s super affordable, and you can get more classes done than you could at a traditional school. I’m happy to have a bachelor’s in cybersecurity and will most likely continue my education pursuing a master’s degree also from WGU.