11 IT Certifications Before 25: The Late Nights, Lessons, and Discipline Behind My IT Journey

Technology is an industry built on change. New tools emerge, new threats develop, and new skills become necessary almost every year. I realized early that if I wanted a real career in IT, I could never stop learning.

Before turning 25, I earned 11 IT certifications. This wasn't about collecting credentials to pad a resume — each one meant late nights after work, topics I had to sit with longer than I wanted to, and a lot of choosing consistency over motivation on days I didn't feel like studying.

Building the foundation

My journey started with two certifications that shaped everything after: CompTIA Security+ and CompTIA Network+.

Security+ came first and gave me the fundamentals of how to think about protecting systems — threats, risk management, and the reasoning behind good security practices. Network+ built on that by teaching me the core concepts of how networks actually operate and how to troubleshoot them when something breaks.

Security and networking turned out to be the two pillars everything else in my career has been stacked on.

From there, I kept expanding:

• Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) — deeper networking, routing, switching, and infrastructure
• CompTIA Cloud+ — cloud infrastructure and operations
• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) — cloud concepts and Azure services
• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) — AI concepts and solutions
• CompTIA PenTest+ — penetration testing and vulnerability assessment
• CompTIA Project+ — project management fundamentals for tech projects
• ITIL 4 Foundation — IT service management and operational practices
• CompTIA A+ — hardware, operating systems, and IT support fundamentals
• CompTIA Tech+ — foundational technology concepts

Alongside these, I also completed OSHA safety and NFPA training, which rounded out my understanding of workplace safety and operational environments — something that doesn't show up in most IT conversations but matters more than people expect.

What the process actually taught me

The certifications themselves matter less than what earning them forced me to build: the discipline to keep going after a long shift, the patience to sit with a concept that wasn't clicking, and the habit of treating "I don't know this yet" as temporary instead of a wall.

Networking taught me how systems talk to each other. Security taught me how to think about what could go wrong before it does. Cloud showed me how fast the ground itself is shifting under this whole industry. And IT operations taught me that none of it matters if it doesn't actually support the people using it.

More than any single exam, the biggest shift was in how I approach problems now. I stopped looking for the answer first and started looking for the actual question — what's really broken, why, and what happens if I'm wrong.

What's next: CCNP

At 26, I'm building on that foundation. My next goal is the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) — the next stage of the networking path, focused on enterprise networks, advanced troubleshooting, and the technologies running today's organizations.

11 certifications was never really the point. It was proof that the discipline behind them works — and that's the part I'm carrying into whatever comes next.