After the Marines, I started my professional IT career in the civilian world. I had studied and received my CCNA certification, as well as Security+, which would help me land my first big boy job in a globally established security company called Websense, as an Enterprise Support Engineer. I was lucky enough to get this amazing position and started working the day after I checked out of the Marines. I was exposed to so many different aspects of the IT world I have never heard of before and obviously had no experience with, and it was a very steep learning curve that I had to climb. I did my research and studied everything I could at home, and had plenty of on-the-job training from other brilliant technicians working at Websense. Servers, appliances, Windows server OS's, linux OS's, the companies software itself, SQL databases, etc. There was so much to learn and I learned it very quickly, with a passion to be great at what I do in my new position. I loved learning these new technologies and troubleshooting issues with the problem solving mindset. I had been promoted within my first 6 months at the company and was officially a valued member of an Enterprise support organization, after coming from nothing and showing up with a passion to learn and succeed regardless of my upbringing.