Winning a scholarship was the next option. I began researching scholarships on the internet and tried to find scholarships for which I actually qualified. It turned out to be difficult for a Caucasian male from an upper-middle-class family to find a financial need-based scholarship. Also, the opportunity to obtain a merit-based scholarship for college seemed to have passed. While I continued to search for scholarships that had were large enough relative to the effort required to apply for them and the low probability that I would win, I decided to work on my resume so that I could possibly earn a reasonable wage.

While I worked with the Career Services office on my resume and tried to land a paid summer internship, I decided to work on Plan B. I had earned decent money in high school by fixing and building computers. In order to get a job fixing computers at a reputable computer store, you need to be A+ certified, which requires studying from a 1,000-page book and passing an exam. Even though sophomore year is extremely difficult, I decided to work towards obtaining this certification. I eventually took and passed the exam and decided to move on to the Network+ certification, which was very complementary to my skills in computer repair and construction. At the same time, I worked as a computer lab assistant in order to get more Unix experience and pad my resume. In addition, I continued to work on the work study research project I had begun during the previous summer with a professor and another student.

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