I want to be challenged in college, but this one class is such that the challenge is actually learning anything. It’s Information Technology Security, which I shorten to infosec (class), and there are multiple assignments due every day of the week. Now, granted, they usually take between 10 and 15 minutes to complete, and some of them are readings or videos, but the content goes through the material so fast that I am struggling to actually remember it.
This one class is the only one that’s challenging and it’s not good challenging. It’s just too much. I am doing fine grade-wise (a high B currently), but I am just not retaining any of the more complex topics. There is supposedly 7+ encryption algorithms I need to be familiar with (AES, RSA, Twofish, more) from a few units ago that I just cannot fully wrap my head around. Understanding Public Key Infrastructure is a prerequisite for practically every chapter, and I struggle with that. I like to think I’ve been around enough tech to have an understanding of digital certificates, but the truth is the process of obtaining one is hard to articulate. I’ve also found the labs sometimes task you with doing things it has only taught you at a high, abstract level; it hasn’t taught you how to do something specific step-by-step in an application or OS. The review questions are vulnerable to the usual multiple-choice strategies, but an open-ended version of the same question would demonstrate I don’t actually know this stuff as well as my grade suggests.
I have reason to believe most of the class isn’t getting all of this, either. A few weeks ago, we played one of those educational Jeopardy! programs, and two of the four teams had negative scores. When the professor asks the class questions, there aren’t a lot of students with answers, and anyone raising their hand ends up answering the question with the intonation of someone who is guessing.
I have some background in some of this stuff, too, so I have an advantage. In my last job as a programmer, I made a login system with C# and Windows Forms that used salted passwords. I mostly followed a guide and consulted IRC, but I am still familiar with some of the concepts. Encryption is something of an interest of mine, too, but the applications of it often go over my head.
This is all a long-winded way to say that I have come to realize that some college classes, unfortunately, just require some level of bullshitting through them. Most of the material won’t be remembered or used. It is what it is. I just wish it was more productive.