After finishing the prescribed half year for my certificate at the computer school, I ended up staying on a bit longer. The system admin, Ariel, had been trying to catch me getting administrator privileges on the school’s VM/CMS system for months. He finally nailed me by hiding behind a curtain in the terminal room while I was snooping inside his directory, catching me red-handed. But instead of booting me out of the program, he offered me a deal: he was impressed with the skills that had allowed me to hack into the school’s computers, and if I would agree to write programs that would make their IBM minicomputer more secure, he would label it an "honors project." How about that: the school was training students in the esoteric knowledge of computers, but recruiting a student to improve its own security. That was a big first for me. I took it as a compliment and accepted the assignment. When I finished the project, I graduated with honors.