Came pretty close to challenging a lecturer today and asking her to back up her points with some research. She is a bit of a rubbish lecturer anyway (dull, dry, not engaging), but she's cut people off mid-sentence, consistently and quite aggressively challenged anyone doing anything on their phone/laptop during lectures, and shown a disregard for any ideas put forward that don't match her own ideology. Supposed to be discourse, innit. I've now been asked to draft a complaint to the course director about her conduct. WOO.

In other news, my fellow course rep. has done something a bit daft. Someone in our group accidentally deleted a ton of stuff from our Dropbox last night and the SCITT admin wasn't best pleased, sending a slightly pissy e-mail out to all of us this morning asking the culprit to rectify it asap as she'd spent so long doing it yesterday. Now, my fellow rep. has sent an e-mail apologising on the girl's behalf and explaining it was a mistake... but then saying that the "the group wished to express that they were upset with the severity of your email given this [was a mistake]."

Completely unnecessary. Argh.

In lighter news, I've been asked to interview for a new Leadership specialism next week. Yay for Tiger RAWRARRRR.

I just remembered Google exists.

https://www.dropbox.com/help/296

It's a strange and useful experience to be rendered semi-illiterate again by moving abroad but I'm kind of bored of feeling like a retard now. Come the new year I'm getting myself to a language school for as long as it takes me to understand the dirty jokes I eavesdrop on during pished nights out.

What's cool is that the tools for self-learning a little bit better these days, including a ton of drilling apps for one's iThing. Just a bit useful when you've several thousand characters to get proficient with.

I wrote my own kanji tester a while ago. It was a bit shit, mind. Yeah there is an expensive one on the iStore which id also heartily recommend. And plenty of card apps...

Gotta learn em all

Hey we DO have an education thread, I knew it!

I've been considering getting another degree sometime, and have by astonishing, never-happens-to-me luck, just won a scholarship with the Open University.  It covers all the costs associated with getting any degree, up to a max of 360 credits; so I can do literally anything in their prospectus.

I've already got a BSc(Hons) in physics, and I don't think I fancy trying to go back into such heavy theoretical maths, especially not doing it part time and the wrong side of 40.  Having a Batchelor's means I'm eligible to do most of their other Master's level programmes though.  How on earth do I pick?

On one hand I fancy doing something I've never studied before; like an MA in English, History or Philosophy.  From a career perspective though, this is a chance to get a free MBA, which would normally cost £15-30k.  I do find that stuff fascinating and the potential practical value is there.

So do I do an MBA for my career, an MA in something totally unrelated for fun, or maybe something almost vocational like a software engineering/data science or digital forensics/cyber security MSc?

Yeah, I figured that cybersecurity or something would be worthwhile if I was doing it 5-10 years ago, and could leverage it into a career path.  I think that the broadening experience of an MBA would be ideal for me now at this stage, without potentially "wasting" the opportunity to do something for fun rather than something that could finalise my career trajectory.

There's an OU MBA which specialises in technology management, with modules in managing tech innovation and strategic capabilities for tech innovation replacing a couple of the standard MBA electives.  A lot of the stuff about that degree appeals.

I'm hoping to get my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) completed by the end of the year. Its really valuable and widely recognized in my industry. Even more so now its the equivalent to a Masters degree.

UK NARIC, the UK’s designated national agency for the recognition and comparison of international qualifications and skills, has found the CISSP Certification comparable to RQF Level 7 Masters degree standard

Good thing about CISSP is that you need a fellow CISSP cert holder to vouch for your experience before you can get the certification after the £600 and 3 hour exam.

Also you need to get a certain number of credits every year to be a member in good standing. Otherwise your certification becomes void. This i think is good as you have to keep your knowledge fresh and up to date.

Once thats done. Then it will be a sAFE certification (Scaled Agile Framework) and after that, hopefully i can knock out the Azure, Aws and Google architecture certifications.

Dinostar77 wrote:

I'm hoping to get my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) completed by the end of the year. Its really valuable and widely recognized in my industry. Even more so now its the equivalent to a Masters degree. UK NARIC, the UK’s designated national agency for the recognition and comparison of international qualifications and skills, has found the CISSP Certification comparable to RQF Level 7 Masters degree standard Good thing about CISSP is that you need a fellow CISSP cert holder to vouch for your experience before you can get the certification after the £600 and 3 hour exam. Also you need to get a certain number of credits every year to be a member in good standing. Otherwise your certification becomes void. This i think is good as you have to keep your knowledge fresh and up to date. Once thats done. Then it will be a sAFE certification (Scaled Agile Framework) and after that, hopefully i can knock out the Azure, Aws and Google architecture certifications.

Aye. Lucky to have a CISSP on my team - aka Dr. Doom. He can be a pain in the arse sometimes but in a good way - glad to have him. Our security team is made up 3 full timers and I'm trying to get the other two to get their badges.

I've been eyeing up CISSM for myself as cyber security is part of my remit.

Dinostar77 wrote:

I'm hoping to get my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) completed by the end of the year. Its really valuable and widely recognized in my industry. Even more so now its the equivalent to a Masters degree. UK NARIC, the UK’s designated national agency for the recognition and comparison of international qualifications and skills, has found the CISSP Certification comparable to RQF Level 7 Masters degree standard

Not to be a total pedant, but that just means it's a qualification at Master's Degree level; not that it's equivalent to a full Master's Degree in and of itself.  It could be a component of a degree course at Master's level.  

Whether or not it's equivalent to a module, a PgC, a PgDip or a Master's Degree would depend on how many credits at level 7 it's considered equal to.

Oh absolutely, I wasn’t denigrating it, these high level specialist qualifications are amazing.

Yup. Experience is of course massive but with cyber security those badges really do matter. Keeping your credits up makes sure to keep up  with developments too.

I reckon someone now could make a rather nice earning getting small businesses through something as basic as Cyber Essentials Plus.

I’m a third of the way through a masters in Sales Leadership. It’s really different studying when you have a clear purpose and when you enjoy the subject matter a lot.

Masters/phd might be a good think to do when one hits retirement age, keep the old grey cells active. Keeping your brain active and challenged is one of the keys to helping to avoid brain abnormalities late in life.