I grew up with a curiosity about how things connect. I did not mean people, but machines, signals, and networks. That curiosity led me to the Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya (EEPIS), where I enrolled in the Telecommunication Engineering diploma program in June 2022.
At EEPIS, I built my foundation from the ground up. I studied the fundamentals of electricity and electronics, learned how computers talk to each other across networks, and picked up the basics of programming. It was not glamorous work. It was the kind of slow, careful learning that turns curiosity into competence. I graduated in October 2025 with a GPA of 3.33 out of 4.00, a number that quietly says I did the work.
In the middle of my studies, in July 2024, I was given a chance to prove myself in the real world. I joined the East Java Police Department as a Network Engineer intern. It was not a small stage for someone still finishing school. There, I was responsible for monitoring internet traffic across the department's infrastructure, watching for signs of trouble in hardware interfaces, and reporting incidents to the engineering team. Every quiet day meant the network held. Every reported incident meant I was paying attention.
I stayed for five months. It was long enough to learn that network work is mostly invisible when done right.
Outside classrooms and offices, I kept building. In 2025, I set up my own self-hosted cloud storage and web services using Docker, making them accessible over a local network tied together with a VPN Overlay. This project lives at the intersection of networking and system administration. Around the same time, I built a virtual lab on Proxmox VE, a sandbox where I could experiment freely with Linux system administration without consequences.
My learning did not stop at projects. In 2025 I earned the MikroTik Certified Network Associate (MTCNA) certification (No. 2505NA6020), validating my skills on one of the most widely deployed routing platforms in Indonesia and beyond. In 2026 I pursued CCNA training, extending my reach into the Cisco ecosystem. I also attended workshops on MikroTik OSPF v7 and webinars on Proxmox networking and container virtualization. I am always adding another layer.
I do not wait for the world to hand me a lab. I build one.