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0.5 Journal: your first entry

Every module ends with a journal entry, and this is the first one. In Module 1 you'll get a proper engineering journal (a version-controlled Obsidian vault), and this entry will migrate into it as its founding page. For now, plain text in any editor is fine. Notepad is fine. Paper is acceptable, though you'll be typing it up later.

Write four things, honestly, because nobody is grading this:

  1. Why you're here. "Get a security job" is allowed. So is "my homelab is chaos and I want to understand what I built." Specific reasons survive the boring weeks better than vague ones.
  2. Your machine: RAM, CPU, free disk. You'll measure these in the next lesson if you don't know them.
  3. The tier you're starting on, from lesson 0.3.
  4. Hours per week you can realistically give this. Write the number you can defend to yourself in a month, not the aspirational one.

Keep the file somewhere you won't lose it.

Why bother? Two reasons, one practical, one personal. Practical: by the capstone, this journal becomes a portfolio, a written record of everything you built and every problem you solved, in your own words, and it interviews better than any certificate. Personal: six months from now you'll want to remember why you started, and week-one you is the only person who can tell you.