Jesse Schibilia

So much has gone on in the last month or so that I haven’t had time to sit down and sort out my thoughts.

In July, I took a job at Rutgers University in the Office of Instructional and Research Technology. I am working on the Sakai Project. Sakai is an open source course management system similar to WebCT or eCollege.

For approximately five weeks, I worked to develop a series of technical documentation to help our users understand how Sakai works. It was a great experience that let me learn the insides of Sakai. Click here to see the web version of my documents.

Now that I have ostensibly completed that project, I am working on user support for Sakai. For the last few weeks, I have been learning JIRA (the bug tracking system that the Sakai Project uses), and OTRS, our local user support ticketing system. I have also been taking help desk calls. I am learning a lot and enjoying what I am doing. I recently tracked down a bug that was affecting how users were uploading files to the system. I tracked the bug all the way from taking the symptoms from the user, testing the behavior, reporting to the developers, and working with the CTO of Rutgers to deploy the code fix that will go into effect tonight. Seeing the entire process was a great experience and I thank my supervisors for giving me this opportunity to learn.

The Office of Instructional and Research Technology happens to share an office building with the Rutgers Information Protection and Security. I have been learning from some of the individuals here, taking any chance I can get to speak with them about my interests in security. They have given me a lot of great resources and guidance as I pursue my goals in information security.

I will be starting on my Rutgers IT Certification tomorrow. There are some parts of this certification that involve information security, so I am really excited to start. I will also be learning UNIX during three of the workshops. I have been offered so many learning opportunities here. It has been a great place to start my career.

I will be attending a Career Day this Friday. There will be a lot of companies there, so I hope to make a lot of good contacts. Now that I have some solid work experience, I know that I have something to offer a company.

I have an interview coming up with a large auditing firm. I am really excited because I will be interviewing with the Information Risk Management department. I have been doing a lot of research in preparation for the interview and I plan on knocking this one out of the park.