Back Again - A Small Life Update

It’s been quite a while since my last post, and I figured it was finally time to sit down and write a small update about what has been going on over the last couple of months.

The reason for the silence is actually pretty simple: the past few months have been completely dominated by my apprenticeship finals, preparation for the written exams, and the documentation for my final project. Most of my time and energy went straight into that, which unfortunately meant that a lot of other things had to take a step back for a while.

One of the biggest parts of the entire apprenticeship was my project documentation for my virtualization project. Anyone who has gone through something similar probably knows how exhausting that phase can become. You spend weeks planning, implementing, documenting, correcting details, rewriting sections, and constantly questioning whether everything is good enough. Especially towards the end, it really starts to drain your energy mentally.

Yesterday, I finally submitted the project officially.

That honestly felt like a massive relief.

At this point, I have completed the written final exams as well, which means the biggest and most stressful part is finally behind me now. The only thing left is the final presentation in mid-June. For that, I still have to prepare a proper PowerPoint presentation and present the entire project in front of a committee. After that, if everything goes according to plan, I will officially be done with my apprenticeship as an IT specialist for system integration.

It’s honestly strange thinking about it now. On one hand, the two years felt incredibly long at times, especially during stressful periods. On the other hand, it somehow feels like everything passed extremely quickly as well. Looking back, I definitely learned a lot during that time, both technically and personally. There were phases where things became overwhelming, phases where motivation dropped completely, and phases where I questioned whether I was actually good enough for some of the things I wanted to achieve. But in the end, pushing through those periods is probably part of the process.

Because of all of this, I had to neglect cybersecurity and TryHackMe quite heavily over the last months. I barely had the time or mental capacity to properly focus on labs, learning paths, or even just spending evenings researching random topics like I usually do. As frustrating as that was sometimes, I also knew that the exams and the project had to come first for now.

The good thing is that this phase is finally coming to an end.

I’m honestly looking forward to getting back into learning consistently again, spending more time on TryHackMe, working on projects, writing more posts, and generally getting deeper into the topics that actually excite me. I missed that quite a lot during the exam phase.

Besides all of that, I also had an interview with the Bundeswehr recently, which gave me a lot to think about afterwards.

Originally, I was very interested in the possibility of going down that route, especially because positions connected to cybersecurity and intelligence work are obviously very appealing to me. Realistically, I would probably even have decent chances of ending up at the MAD, which is something I seriously considered for a while.

However, the conversation also took a bit of motivation away from me.

One of the biggest issues is the length of commitment that now comes with the Feldwebel career path. At the moment, we are talking about roughly 15 years of mandatory service, which is honestly a massive amount of time. The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I started questioning whether that path would actually align with my long-term goals.

Fifteen years is not just “some time.” Those are important years where you gain practical experience, specialize professionally, build your career, and establish yourself financially. While the work itself sounds incredibly interesting, I also have to realistically consider what I might be giving up in return.

Because of that, I’m currently keeping the option open, but I’m no longer approaching it with the same certainty as before. I think it’s one of those decisions where you really have to step back and honestly ask yourself what kind of future you actually want for yourself.

At the same time, things at my internship are going surprisingly well. The question already came up whether I would want to stay after finishing the apprenticeship, and if that offer still exists once everything is officially done, I will most likely accept it.

Right now, that honestly feels like the smartest option.

I think gaining practical experience first, continuing to improve technically, and building a stronger foundation before making huge long-term decisions is probably the better path for me at this stage. There is still plenty of time later to make bigger career decisions once I have more experience and a clearer direction.

So overall, this is basically just a small status update after a month of silence.

I’m still here.

I’m doing well.

The exhausting part is mostly over now, and after months of stress, pressure, exams, and documentation, I can finally start focusing my energy again on learning, improving, and moving forward.