Noah Heroldt, a junior in cybersecurity in Indianapolis, grew up with an interest in computers: "I was basically a 'user' for a really long time, and that was it." Before he decided on college, he already knew he wanted to go into a field that would expand his knowledge base. His father discovered that Purdue is a participant in the federal CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program. Heroldt toured Indianapolis during his junior year of high school and met Feng Li, now head of the School of Applied and Creative Computing. Li asked Heroldt if he knew about Kali Linux, an operating system used for penetration testing. "I went home that day [and] searched for it," Heroldt said. "I didn't know hacking could be used as a career. From there I was kind of dead-set, locked in on, 'this is what I want to do.'" Heroldt spent the next 10 months teaching himself the fundamentals of networking and ethical hacking. Through no small amount of self-training, he was able to arrive at college with a meaningful head start. "That raw curiosity that sparked after my conversation with Doctor Li fueled a fire that has done me so much good throughout my college career," Heroldt said. "I learned a lot of what I know now outside of class, just on my own time, being curious about how things worked." "I truly believe that anyone can learn anything these days as long as you have a connection to the internet. It's one of the reasons why I started my YouTube channel. I learned so much from the cyber community online and I wanted to do my part and give back, laying my knowledge down for future learners who might just pick this up on a whim, which is basically what I did." While