My name is Amir Khalil, born in 1991 in Chicago. I have worked in manufacturing for the past 14 years as a Cnc Programmer. I wrote programs that would take a piece of metal and turn it into something. I seen a video on what people were making from writing code, and instantly became fascinated. Yet, I never pursued the IT field until 2023. I had alot of major life events happen in 2023 that had me reflecting on my life. I discovered that I would like to to learn how to make things online with code, and I enrolled in a Computer science program. I later realized that If i did 4 years in this program, I would be 100k in debt. So, I did research on what exactly I wanted to do, and I found the MEAN stack program at a community college in my city. I immediately joined the program, and dropped out of the computer science program. I completed the program, and now I can build websites and apps from scratch, But, I wasn’t fulfilled. Now its 2024 and after hundreds of hours of research and reading, I have discovered what I really want to do in the IT field – to become a Penetration tester. I was looking for programs in my area, and I applied to a fully funded program that will allow me to get 5 Google IT professional certificates, and a Comptia A+ certificate. But I was on the waiting list, and they said that it was similar to winning the lottery. I was totally bummed, I thought “atleast I tried”, and continued looking at programs in my area. About 3 months later I get a call from that program. They told me that I had been selected and I have to fill out a bunch of documents to see if I qualify. About a week later I get a call, the lady said “Amir, you have been selected as our final applicant in the program(there are only 9 spots)and class starts March 3rd!” I felt like I won the lottery! Not alot of good things have happened in my life up until this point, so you could only imagine how I was feeling. I decided to create a blog, and a YouTube channel to document my entire journey, from the beginning of the program to getting a job. I also plan to provide my blog with all the latest tech news as well. Thank you for reading my story, and welcome to My blog. I hope to help, and inspire all of you!