How I ended up studying Cybersecurity in polytechnic

My first exposure to "technology" was when I was seven years old. My mum also encouraged me to learn coding, like code.org's hour of code, and Hopscotch, which both used block programming language. She saw it as a more productive alternative to playing video games.

When I was in primary school, I joined the InfoComm Club, where I learnt Scratch. The first time I touched a real programming language was when I was 11 years old. My mum sent me and my brother for a boot camp at a coding school in Singapore. It was a 3 day boot camp on Python, however at the time I struggled to understand it.

In secondary school, I assumed that joining the Robotics Club would be a natural progression from my experience in the InfoComm Club. During my second year, Python was introduced as part of the curriculum, but I still found it difficult to understand. I often copied code from the teacher’s screen without truly understanding what I was doing.

At the end of Secondary Two, we were given the option to choose an applied subject—biotechnology, computing, design studies, or engineering. I chose computing, though I don’t recall my exact reasoning. On the first day of class, my teacher introduced various career paths in computing, briefly touching on cybersecurity. She mentioned the high demand and competitive salaries in the field, which left a strong impression on me.

In my third year, I taught myself Lua to create simple games on Roblox Studio. I found the process enjoyable and participated in a Roblox game jam at the end of 2021, where I placed second. For a time, I believed game design was my true calling.

When I received my O-Level results, I was disappointed—I had hoped to qualify for Junior College. While exploring my options in the thick post-O-Level course guide, I came across Cybersecurity and was reminded of my fascination with hacking. That moment reignited my interest and set me on the path I’m on today.