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“I had long contemplated a career in technology.  In high school, I was preparing for a military career.  The Air Force Academy had interest in recruiting me and I also received a full Army ROTC scholarship to pursue computer science.  The stage was set, but after years of visiting military bases and the academy, I decided against joining the military and thus decided to try something other than computers since my options were wide open.

For my education I ultimately ended up at the University of Hawai’i where I got my degree in anthropology.  I was successful in my coursework and landed a job in cultural resource management, but this field did not prove adequate in security and compensation to meet my personal and professional goals.  I moved to Chicago with my wife for her job opportunities, and I worked in retail and freelance art as I set to the hard task of starting over with a new career change.  That is where IT Career Lab found me—back at the beginning so to speak.

My experience with IT Career Lab has been a positive one.  With the general knowledge of computers I brought to the table through a lifetime of personal use which included gaming and digital art & design, the Cisco Academy coursework expanded on this and gave me an additional knowledge base for setting up and maintaining a professional network.  I learned best practices as well as actual interface commands for manipulating routers and switches, and I was able to demonstrate this ability through the Cisco certification exams.  With attention to the instruction and many hours of hard studying, I was able to earn both my CCENT and CCNA and get an internship with National Able Network.  That is what is so great about IT Career Lab:  it gave me a place to start.  Now I have that crucial education and initial work experience to move forward in the information technology field.”

-Jeff Oleniacz