Ok, so here's my whole situation.

I'm 17, I'm graduating and heading to college this fall. I'm what I'd like to call a Computer Adept. I know networking concepts, have taken the CCNA twice (never passed, just gave up the second time, missed it by 30 points) so that should give you just a basic overview of my level of knowledge. I constantly tell everyone that I want to be a networking administrator and eventually that I want to go into security, and I've always fealt that I was heading on the right track. But when I look around here, I see that there is soooo much that I dont know.

I've been a member for a while now, but now I am just starting to be ready to take an active role. I want to be a Security Expert, thats what my whole focus is, it has been my drive since I was in 9th grade and took my first Cisco class. Now im getting ready to go to college (University of Central Florida) and am planning on setting Information Technology as my Major (simply because Computer Science means alot of programming, and though i've taken several programming classes in Java, C++, and VB.net, I've discovered I just am not a programmer). I just want to know what kind of advice you guys could give me. What should I be doing to get myself more "security prone". I've only dabbed a bit in linux (I took a Unix Class where we played around with Redhat 8 and SuSe 9) but almost all of my computer experience has been with Windows.

How should I be going about expanding my knowledge about networks and computer systems and network security? I want to make this my passion, and I feel this is the best place to get advice, any and all suggestions I would greatly appreciate.