S-STEM Scholar Wyatt Bylbie's Blog

 When I first attended college, I was unsure what to major in. I was sure that it had to be something related to computers. I later dropped out in my second semester. When I returned, I knew it had to be computer science. Since then my major switched to Applied Computing. There was not much thought into the idea, I knew I enjoyed computers and technology. I figured that it would be the best fit. I never thought about potential money income, pressure from others, or even any influence from tv shows/videos. In fact, I had only known of one person in the related field of networking but I never saw them often enough. After being more knowledgeable in my major, I watch more tv shows or videos that encourage me to learn more. The more I read/watch STEM excites me and it makes me more certain to pursue this as a career. I never saw myself as a STEM student, I was far from it in high school and even first starting college. One could even say that when I returned. Everyone belongs in STEM, ...

  When reading some articles revolving around the topic of mindsets, they had me thinking about the time I had to do a similar paper on growth mindsets. In my former class, Career Strategies and Personal Resilience, we dove into this topic within the first two weeks of the semester. We identified what type of mindset we had and maybe the reasoning behind it. At first, I believed to have had a fixed mindset. The feeling of being okay with where I was at, not having the motivation to improve on myself. After turning twenty-one, I suddenly had the desire to make a change in my life go back to school, and develop a more growth mindset. While reflecting on this, I was reading the article  “Students’ Mindsets for Learning and Their Neural Underpinnings”,  I was stopped at the entity mindset description. I used to believe that my intelligence was fixed and cannot be improved. Later the term incremental mindset was used, and this reflected the growth mindset. These same mindsets ...

 Like most students, many do not either get a job or an internship to help build those valuable skills for future work. Without them, students build those same skills, if not different ones while in school. For myself, one valuable skill I gained was time management. Before covid and even now, I coached with the high school students in cross country and wrestling. During those times and even today, time management is crucial to my success. Often, I do not get back home until 6:00 pm. Those days I am leaving around 9:00 am. Using that college experience into employer desired, I can create the time needed to complete tasks and know how much time I will need for said task. Another experience I picked up and learned was knowing how to efficiently take good notes to form good studying habits. In the field of Applied Computing- Cybersecurity, technology is constantly changing. Because of that, being able to take readable notes and study on your own time is needed to learn the new technol...

 Before starting college, I knew I wanted a degree. Even then and more importantly now after coming back, I didn’t want that degree to collect dust. After considering my options I settled with Applied Computing (Cybersecurity), after not being able to pursue Computer Science. Which works out for me. My degree is more focused on a topic, rather than being broad. Although Applied Computing (Cybersecurity) can be broad as well. You need to find a topic to study more in. It could be cloud-based security or even internet of things security. The perfect scenario would be to find a cybersecurity job with my degree and build off the job, meaning having to get any certifications to either help get a job or make the job easier if possible. Even if I do not use the degree in that field, I do not think the degree will collect dust. I have always said that the backup plan would be to teach high school students with the connections I have made coaching high school sports. Possibly a math teacher...

 Currently, from my previous post, my online presence still has not changed. I still use Instagram for my personal life, which has not been updated since my trips to New York and Washington D.C. from the summer. In the coming future, my online presence will soon move to Linkedin. I still have second thoughts about staying on Instagram, but I like the idea of being able to reconnect with people, but at the same time I always figured why even bother. I still use Tik-Tok to find my vegan restaurants and recipes. I don't see that changing anytime soon. I rather stay away from being online, I would like to keep only professional material online, such as LinkedIn, GitHub, or any other programming-related material. The exception could be the wrestling and cross country teams I coach. If I have to, I would take over the social media accounts for them. My online presence will stay the way it is, if anything, I'll remove Instagram and Tik-Tok.   

  Social media has been a great way for people to connect with others. They meet new lifelong friends, and enemies. As a teenager, my online presence was well known. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and vine. I was active on both Twitter and Instagram. Facebook was from my elementary school days, and vine was the then Tik-Tok of today. I mainly use those for entertainment purposes. After high school graduation, social media became old very quickly. As a result, I deleted all forms of social media. It was not until I went on a recent trip to New York and Washington D.C that I wanted an online presence again. I mainly wanted it to store and view the different days of the trip for myself. The number of followers did not matter and still does not matter. I mainly now use Instagram to find local vegan restaurants, and recipes now. My online presence is also on Tik-Tok now. Although rather than dancing in front of the camera, I strictly use it to find more local vegan restaura...