Online Student Stories: The Most Important Lessons I Learned at Champlain

Going Back to School to Make a Career Change

What led me to Champlain was my desire to make a career change from information technology to digital forensics. My start in the field was actually being turned down for a job. I was working in IT at the time, and saw an ad in the newspaper for a digital forensics position with a local police department. After doing some research into that field I was intrigued and applied. Although I was turned down, the experience kicked off a period of self-study and pondering over how I’d make the transition. 

At first, I didn’t consider college, since with work and family it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to commit to being in a physical location a few times a week for several years. However, I found Champlain College and was impressed by their reputation, as well as their online program. For me, and I imagine many of my classmates, that flexibility made pursuing a college education a reality. 

During my time at Champlain - during which I obtained both a bachelor's degree in computer forensics and digital investigations, and a master's degree in digital forensics - I was fortunate enough to be able to transition into my new career by pursuing internships and working in various sectors of the field. Through it all, I’ve been fortunate to meet many people who spent time with me and provided me with instruction and guidance. 

 

The Lessons I Learned at Champlain College Online

I want to share the most important lessons I’ve learned though my time here at Champlain. They’re not complex ideas, but truth doesn’t have to be complex - it just needs to be true. Hopefully they can be helpful to you as well, whether you've just completed a degree program like me, or you're just starting out on your educational journey.

Stay Humble

To begin, I want to convey the importance of staying humble. Just because I have a college degree doesn’t make me better than anyone else, and just because someone doesn’t have a degree doesn’t make them any less valuable. Everyone has their own knowledge set, and everyone has gaps in what they know that someone else can fill. For example, I’ve been a nerd all my life: I tell everyone that I have no practical skills, so I won’t last two days when the zombie apocalypse happens. 

If you’re willing to listen to people, there are many things that others can teach you. This of course applies to your career, but more importantly, it applies to life in general. 

Stay Generous

The next bit of advice is to stay generous. We often talk of the importance sharing our resources - money, food, and other material possessions. However, I’m encouraging you to be generous with your knowledge and time as well. 

Our instructors give us a great deal of valuable knowledge during our time at Champlain, and as classmates, we also learn from each other. It’s our responsibility to share what we’ve learned with others. 

In every place I’ve worked, there have been people who took the time to share what they knew to help me grow. As we move along our own paths, we will meet people with whom we can share our knowledge in order to help them along their own paths. 

But it’s not just knowledge we need to be generous with. We need to be generous with our time. It wasn't always easy to juggle everything that needed to get done, and we had to find a way to balance school, work and family to make it happen. As a personal example, there’s a picture of me at Disneyland on a family outing. I’m sitting on the ground waiting for a show to start and I’m on my phone working in Canvas. 

The point is - make sure you don’t forget to spend time with your family, friends and other loved ones, since they won’t always be with you. My own family has lost two beloved members in the last two and a half years, while my oldest grandson has grown up and started along his own path. Make sure you cherish those around you while they are there. 

Stay Creative

Thirdly, I would encourage you to stay creative. Your path will often have obstacles - professional, physical, intellectual, personal, emotional - that can require creative, and sometimes unusual, solutions. And to me, no one exemplifies coming up with creative and unusual ideas more than Wile E. Coyote. 

I’ve often been told, “But he never catches the Road Runner!”  - but that isn’t the point. The point is that he never gives up on his goals no matter how difficult it becomes, and he never stops coming up with new solutions to the problem at hand. After all, how many people would come up with the idea to strap a refrigerator to their back, and use the ice maker and a meat grinder to create snow so they can ski down a hill? I know that’s not likely to be a problem we’ll face, but that kind of creativity and determination is what we should all aspire to.

Stay on Your Path

Lastly, I’ve learned that you should stay on your path. Your path isn't anyone else’s. You may not know where it leads. And despite all of your planning, it could very well take you somewhere you never anticipated. 

In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams, the main character, Dirk Gently, uses an unorthodox navigation method to reach his destination. After arriving, he tells everyone, “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” 

This passage  was meant to be humorous, but in reading it, it really struck me as a serious life lesson to consider. I never thought I’d be working where I am, with a college degree, living where I do, and most importantly, having the family I have. But looking back on it all, I ended up where I needed to be, and that makes all the things that I thought I wanted and had planned on, but didn’t get, so very unimportant. 

After all, what makes for a more meaningful life? To arrive where you wanted to go? Or to arrive where you were needed? 

Richard Smith is a 2020 graduate of Champlain's online M.S. in Digital Forensic Science program. He previously earned his  B.S. in Computer Forensics & Digital Forensics from Champlain.