Not sure why you were enabling HTTPS for a project that was not hosting an internet-accessible service, really. By which I assume you mean the service doesn't have a publicly accessible web based UI or API component. What were you trying to access and how? The only scenario I could think of for this would be that your custom software relies on HTTPS for secure communication within its own internal network (such as on a VPN) to send sensitive data back and forth between services. In which case that feels like overkill for a college course, since you shouldn't have any genuinely sensitive data that you need to secure if it's just for testing and demonstration.