Has the course that I've studied been largely relevant to the career I have now?

I did my Bachelor of Science (Information Systems) with a 2nd Major in Advanced Business Technology (Information Security & Assurance Track) in SMU. It is largely related to Cyber Security — one of the fields that I wish to enter. 

I’m aiming for a career in the Information Technology (IT) aspect of Software Engineering, Application Development and Cyber Security. Based on past experiences from school and internship, they require the knowledge of Mathematical concepts, like Prime Numbers, and skills such as Creative Thinking, Computational Thinking, and Algorithms Thinking. I will also have to have the discipline to research whenever I can. 

This is because I am dealing with “probability” most of the time, for instance, the probability of a system being hacked, used, or abused. 

My math knowledge had helped me a lot during various assessments while applying for internships or full-time roles. I was surprised when one of the entrance assessments for a company included only one coding question, with other questions focusing on IQ and math. 

Things I've Learnt in School That Applies To My Current Career

 

Creative thinking applies to almost every sector I can think of. This can be through contributing ideas or suggesting minor changes on the final idea to tweak it to perfection. I have found this process to be easier as I had done it before in the project-based modules in SMU. I strongly encourage students not to avoid projects modules in your future education after GCE ‘O’ Levels or GCE ‘N’ Levels. Doing more projects can help to prepare you in entering the workforce in due time. 

As a student, many of us have experienced different solutions or workings for the same question. Sometimes, not all these solutions are wrong, they are just different. This is comparable to computational thinking in the IT industry, where we are given the same input and intended output, yet people can have different ways to perform the tasks. 

This means that the time taken to produce the intended outputs by each individuals vary as they tackle different issues  produced by different computation models. The efficiency in computational model (Big O Notation) involves prior math knowledge such as logarithms, constant terms, and polynomials which are topics taught in school. 

Algorithm thinking is largely related to number patterns and breaking down a complex question into simpler parts. Visualization thinking is required to solve these patterns to identify the patterns for programming questions. This is very relevant to my career as I have to derive the best ways to resolve an issue or perform some analytics. The simpler the derived equation, the more efficient it is. 

To students who wish to pursue a career or education in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, bear in mind that whatever we have been learning since the beginning of our student lives will be related to what we need to know for our career. 

Prime numbers is largely related to cyber security. When I am doing encryption and decryption, the basics of Cyber Security, one of the key factors to ensure that I can have a stronger encryption key is to find the largest prime number I can. While the technical terms may seem complicated, the main concept is that the higher the prime number, the more time and effort the hacker will need to decrypt the encryption key. What I have learnt from school has helped me to devise models and plans that are unbreakable from common online tools. 

Learning Beyond My Textbooks 

Lessons beyond the curriculum are just as important — the hunger for learning has helped me through difficult times in school and in my career. 

My passion for IT has spurred me on to willingly learn more things in university. I have seen friends who have picked reputable courses, only to fare badly because they did not have any interest in what they were learning. 

However, some may argue that their university course has very little to no relevance to what he or she is doing. There are such instances as well, as some may realise that their interest lies in other areas upon graduating. 

I sincerely hope that any student reading this will believe that no matter what we are studying, the skill sets and knowledge will be relevant to our future career in more ways than one. With that said, I hope you have the courage to pursue the course you have an interest in.

By Tutor Tan Lye Jun

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