Intro and Guidance

Savvy

Hi everyone. I've been reading through these forums for the past few days looking for some information. I am currently in the AF but I'm considering whether or not to separate once my enlistment is up in a little over a year. I obviously have my own reasons for deciding to get out, but I'm not necessarily burning the bridge as far as staying in goes just yet.

I know the economy is still kind of in a bad place right now, but hopefully it'll start improving by the end of the year. I have been a desktop admin for my entire career so far, with minor stints at help desk jobs. I have CompTIA certs, but I'm thinking that if I decide to get out I should look at getting some more advanced certificates with subjects I am somewhat familiar with.

Two certs that I am looking at getting are CCNA (which could be a little difficult since I haven't done much with it in the past few years), as well as starting down the MCITP path, focusing on either Enterprise Desktop Admin or Desktop Support Tech. I feel that by staying with what I am fairly comfortable with I have a better chance of getting it in the time I have before I'd separate, and then I can further specialize down the road in my career.

On a sidenote, I am about five classes away from a B.S. in MIS. Would you suggest I finish that in the next year, or focus on getting some more certificates knocked out before I separate and finish the school up a little later? Thanks for any insight you can provide. I'll continue digging around. I just wanted to introduce myself and throw out a couple questions.

-Jordan

coty24

Hey man welcome to TE! Everyone here is very knowledgeable and willing to help anytime. As for your question, I hear you about the getting out thing, and yes the civilian job market can be scary. If I were you, I would first finish your BS, and then work on certs in that order. During then, decide what field you would like to specialize in be it, networking, systems admin/engineer, software,security, or database technologies.

Take me for example, I start in IT as IT specialist doing help desk tickets and whatnot. In my mind for a long time, I wanted to be in the infosec field. Long story short I went from helpdesk to networking back down to break-fix admin. Now I am a Systems Administrator; I will stay in this field for a while and then go Infosec AFTER my BS degree. I'm almost finished, i think.:) What I'm getting at is figure out where career wise you want to go, then plan out the most logical solution you can. If you can meet your goals in the Air Force then do it there. I'm National Guard now, but I'm thinking for switching to the AF Reserve. Cyber Surety is an AFSC i'm interested in. It also lines up with my goal of being infosec as well.


Sorry for rambling, but I'm just trying to show you for my perspective of being where you are now and pursuing goals and whatnot. I hope this helped man, God bless

-Coty

Savvy

Well the Air Force played their trump card over my life and decided to offer me a position that I really couldn't turn down. So Uncle Sam has me for four more years as of today. Not exactly what I was planning on, but at least now I know I'll be able to finish my Bachelor's and work on some more specialized certificate programs over the next few years. If I'm really clipping through things well, I may even start working on a Master's program. That's a little ways off though for me right now. Just going with small achievable goals that will paint the big picture down the road. Excited for the next four years though, I should be able to learn a lot and better ready myself for potentially becoming a civilian again (although I'm going to have to weigh the options again at that time). I'll definitely continue lurking here as there's tons of useful information, and I'll contribute when I can.