novice - need direction

[eloepp]

so, i've been in school for about a year now... going for an AA in network security. so far I can honestly say... that I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention this whole time and haven't even learned much (sad face). i guess it's because i play too many video games... i'm kind of a video game nerd, but i think i'm going to cut back and start getting serious about this otherwise i'm going to graduate and work at mcdonalds, i'm serious. so i'm going to start paying more attention, but beside all that i wanted to learn more than just security, i want to start practicing / learning about other things on my own and be well rounded with my computer knowledge in general and am looking for direction on that. there's a so many different books out there and so many different things to learn, i guess my main focus will be networking and security, but I don't want to have tunnel vision and just focus on a single thing and be oblivious to everything else. for example, I have an uncle that has been a programmer for 20 years and claims he knows everything about computers, yet when I asked him if he knew what a class A, class B, etc ip address was or what subnetting was he had no idea.

anyway, i've been looking at ebooks and ones about hacking seem to pop up a lot. i'm not sure i have any interest in that type of thing, although... my thoughts are that... that may be a good way to learn. but at the same time those books seem a little... well, cheesy. I also wanted to go back and review the OSI model a little more but haven't been able to find any good books on that specifically. anyway, any advice on where to start or what books to read would be appreciated. and also, i'm not interested in any books on A+ or something like "beginners guide to windows vista 2009!". thanks

 

[Cx]

first you should seek to coherently communicate.

if you're looking for a degree in networking you probably want to seek out one of the cisco certification paths.

if you want to understand security having a deep understanding of computers in general would be beneficial. so being selective of the topics wouldn't be a good idea. understanding applications, operating systems, files, configs, programming, input, input validation ect... would be a step in the right direction.

cheers