People sometimes ask me how I ended up studying cybersecurity. There isn’t one clean answer — it was more like a slow drift that started a long time before I knew what “cybersecurity” even meant.

The first PC⌗

I got my first computer when I was 10. It was an old laptop running Windows 7 — nothing special, just something someone in the family wasn’t using anymore — but to me it was the most interesting thing in the house.

At first I just used it: games, YouTube, the usual. But pretty quickly I started wondering what it actually was. Why did clicking some icons open programs? What were all those files in folders I wasn’t supposed to touch? What happens when you press a key?

I didn’t know anyone who could really explain it, so I started clicking around. I broke things. I fixed some of them. I broke them again.

Breaking and fixing⌗

Once you start poking at a PC, you can’t really stop. I went from changing wallpapers to messing with system settings, then to installing weird software just to see what it would do. I remember spending a whole weekend trying to figure out why my computer was slow, learning about background processes for the first time.

Most of what I learned came from breaking something first and then digging until I knew enough to fix it. It wasn’t efficient, but every fix taught me something the manual never would have.

Discovering the command line⌗

Somewhere along the way I discovered the command line. That felt like a cheat code — suddenly I could do things the regular interface didn’t let me do. I had no idea what most of the commands meant, but every new one I learned felt like unlocking a little bit more of the machine.

The first time I chained a few commands together to automate something boring, I realized the computer wasn’t just something I used. It was something I could tell what to do.

Building my own PC⌗

A few years in, I decided I wanted a proper machine of my own. Not a laptop — a desktop I’d built myself. I spent about two years saving up, buying parts one at a time as I could afford them: CPU first, then motherboard, then RAM, GPU, storage, case, power supply. By the time the last piece arrived, I’d been planning the build in my head for months.

Putting it all together was its own kind of education. Cable management, BIOS, boot order, drivers — every step was something I had to figure out instead of having handed to me. When it finally posted and I saw my own machine come to life, it didn’t really feel like just a PC anymore. It felt like something I’d actually earned.

Programming courses⌗

Around the same time, I asked my parents if I could go to programming courses, and they said yes. It wasn’t just Python — I went through a few different languages and topics over time, picking up the basics of how programs are actually structured.

That was the first time I learned things in a structured way instead of stumbling through forum threads. It gave me a foundation I’d been missing: how variables, loops, functions, and data actually fit together. After that, picking up any new language or tool felt a lot less intimidating.

Linux⌗

That PC was where I finally tried Linux properly. The first time it installed and actually booted, I felt like I’d built something — even though I’d literally just followed an installer.

Linux is where things really clicked. Everything was transparent. You could read config files, edit them, see logs, understand what every running process was doing. It rewarded curiosity instead of hiding things from you. After a while, Windows started to feel like a black box by comparison.

Howest⌗

By the time I had to choose what to study, the direction was already obvious. Cybersecurity at Howest was the program that lined up best with what I’d been doing for fun anyway — system administration, networking, programming, and security all in one place.

The structured side of school filled in the gaps I’d built up unevenly: protocols I’d half-understood, theory behind the tools I’d been using, proper methodology instead of just poking around. It also pushed me into areas I would never have explored on my own, which is exactly what a good program should do.