front matter
preface
In 2018, as a junior high school English teacher in the city of Kobe, Japan, I found myself at a crossroads. What I had originally intended to be a brief teaching stint in Japan had stretched into four years, and I was reaching the limit of my stay. I was in Japan on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, a program sponsored by the Japanese government to bring recent university graduates to Japan to teach English for up to 5 years. As my tenure neared its end, I pondered my next step.
Being fascinated with computers since childhood, I found the field of IT a natural choice. I was no computer wizard—I had no experience in programming or anything of the sort—but after some searching, I stumbled upon the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. If the stories were to be believed, getting CCNA certified was the gateway to a promising career in IT with a decent salary and plenty of room for growth. After a bit of studying, I was hooked! Peering under the hood of networks like the internet—an ubiquitous part of the modern world—was (and still is) endlessly fascinating.