Not exactly wings, but I'm still standing...

For my certification (see previous blog), I had 3 exams, which had to average out at 80%. After the first two, I thought I had figured that the third needed to score at least 75, so when I received a 71 I spent a few hours feeling like a devastated failure. Then I looked up the scores, recalculated, and found that I had an 80.333%! I passed!! A few days later, I received official word, with a certificate number. I was extremely relieved.

So... now what?

I'm still working on that, but yesterday I met with my "mentor" (he does computer forensics at the local law enforcement office) and he gave me a couple of ideas, including offering my services to the local camera shops to recover pictures from customer's memory cards when they've accidentally been formatted. I've actually done that once for a friend! Okay, so there's a start. And maybe I'll get some more training/education. That's the thing about education, especially in technology, you can never get enough...

Nearing the cliff, do I have wings?

I read a quote once that I liked that says:
"When we come to the edge of the light we know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, of this we can be sure... either we will be provided something solid to stand on, or we will be taught to fly."

After receiving an email reminder that my time is almost expired a few days ago, I am nearing completion of my third and final examination report for the computer forensics certification that I started working toward in May of last year. The process has been very stressful for me, off and on, and I am anxious to be finished with it, but not so anxious that I want to miss out on any of the possible points. The worst part is that this particular testing process is just that, a test, and therefore when the first two reports were graded, I received no feedback other than scores. I was able to greatly improve my score between the first and the second, but the difficulty of the third exam, greatly outweighs the first two.

The biggest peace I feel right now, as the report is complete and in final revisions before submission is that I am not counting on this certification for my next career move. It will be beneficial (note the positive foreshadowing ;-), but I just landed a great job, and it wasn't on the "condition that I would earn a forensic certification".

Speaking of my job, can I just say, whew! I am still in the learning curve, but I am so grateful for my job and the company. I'm not sure I can convey how much stress I felt in having to commute in freeway traffic for over 2 hours everyday, always wondering how late I was going to be and if there was going to be an accident that slowed everything down. In the month that I've been working my new job, I haven't had a commute that was longer than 40 minutes (each way), and there is no real "traffic" to speak of, even during rush hour.

I can feel myself slowly unwinding and it's kind of a strange feeling. I didn't realize how tightly I had been strung!