• Current Mood: Udon
• Currently Listening To: "Subterranean Homesick Alien", Radiohead
• Currently Reading: "Angler", Barton Gellman

• Current Mood: Hungry
• Currently Listening To: "Thunder Road", Bruce Springsteen

As for the MSST program itself, it’s going very well. Our first course, dealing mainly with the psychology of terrorism, is already over, and it was very interesting. Ron Krebs, the instructor for the majority of the class, handled the class exceptionally, with a very good balance of lecture and group activities, as well as engrossing readings. I and several of my classmates were interested in taking a course he is teaching in the fall, but the workload just isn’t something I could handle while working, planning a wedding, and electioneering. Our current two courses, on critical infrastructure protection and science and technology in security, are also very interesting. They are pretty broad courses with a number of guest speakers lecturing on their particular expertises (cybersecurity, biosecurity, food security, pandemic preparedness, and so on) and they will provide for a good base upon which we can expand in later classes. They are also great at scaring the crap out of us.

In a little more than a month, the summer semester will be over and I’ll be 25% done with my degree. Not bad. Next on the to do list: thinking of a capstone project.

• Current Mood: Hump day
• Currently Listening To: "Let It Bleed", The Rolling Stones

First, a bit of background. I started thinking about continuing my education around four years ago. While not nailing doing a specific focus, I find the issues of data security and data privacy to be very interesting, from the gadgetry of security like encryption algorithms (On my bookshelf sits Applied Cryptography, written by a renowned security expert) to the legal aspects of collecting, storing, securing, buying, and selling all the data that corporations, governments, and other groups collect about people. I knew that I wanted to educate myself in that field, as it combined my interests while also being very desirable from a career point of view.

I looked at Masters programs in Information Security and Information Technology, but I found them to be lacking. For one thing, many of these programs were offered by online-only universities, about which I could find very little information. In addition, these programs tended to be far too tech-oriented: while I would be okay with learning how to better configure a firewall or utilize SSL, I wanted to learn about policy as well.

I thus went in the other direction completely, and looked at law school. Being a political science major/philosophy minor, law school seemed to be right up my alley. It would give me the legal and policy knowledge I was looking for, and could set me up for any number of careers. I even took the LSAT (twice!) and moved to Boston to attend law school.

What stopped me from attending law school was the significant downsides. First, there is the time commitment: almost three years. Second was the enormous expense involved, which would have put me into six figures of debt. Since I wanted to do public interest law or some other kind of non-lucrative position, the debt would have really put me under a lot of pressure. Finally, and most importantly, I didn’t really want to be a lawyer. I wanted to learn all about it, and use it, but I didn’t want to do all those lawyerly things that aren’t on TV but make up 90% of the job of a lawyer.

That said, the time commitment wasn’t too bad, but the expense and not really wanting to be a lawyer were the major issues. Had I been able to go to a good school on a full-tuition scholarship, that would have eliminated objection two (and, indirectly, objection three, because I wouldn’t be forced to try to be a lawyer to pay off my mortgage-sized debt). Unfortunately, although I came close to that scholarship, I just couldn’t pull it off. Blame my two Fs during my junior year of college.

That left me back at square one last summer, and I didn’t know what to do next. Then one day, Julia heard a story on MPR about the new MSST program. It sounded exactly like what I was looking for: a balance between the technical side of security and the legal/policy side. It threw in other areas of study that I find interesting, such as the human psychology of security. I went to an information session in November, and learned even more: that the program was one of its kind in the Midwest, that it allowed students to choose which areas of security to specialize in, that it would be taught by the best professors from all the schools at the U….in short, I was hooked. The fact that it was part-time, allowing me to work, and took only 14 months didn’t hurt either. I put in my application, had my interview, and I’m happy to say I was admitted.

It took me longer to find a program than I had hoped, but I think the end result will be worth it. Although I had become discouraged at several points in my grad school search, I kept on looking and didn’t lose sight of my goal to find the right program for me, not just a program that was close enough. Classes don’t start until June, but so far I feel safe saying that patience definitely paid off in this case.

• Current Mood: Full
• Currently Listening To: "The End", The Doors