Welcome to this blog. Here I’ll be cataloguing my experience navigating the OSU capstone project as part of my final term in the OSU post-bacc computer science program. But first, I think it would be helpful to reflect on how I got here in the first place.
I’ve been an elementary school music teacher for the past nine years. Somehow after pursuing a piano performance degree in college, and then thinking that I wanted to teach high school choir, I ended up completely falling in love with teaching elementary. It was an incredible journey. But to make a long story short, new dreams are afoot!
Part of the seed was planted by a good friend who gifted me with a book trilogy several years ago: “The Three Body Problem”, by Chinese author Cixin Liu. The trilogy’s exploration of the deep future of humanity kindled my imagination about how the world will be shaped by human engineering. I wanted to participate.
My interest in software engineering clicked into place around the same time. During the summers off from teaching I used to spend long hours composing music in my home studio. I ultimately came to realize that it was the innate process that I loved even more than the music itself: learning new skills, developing a sense of style, building a deep intuitive understanding of a project, creating, collaborating, tweaking and perfecting. As I searched for a new career direction, I began to think that I might be able to engage those exact same skills in software engineering.
This hunch has proven more true than I could’ve imagined. Since enrolling in the Oregon State University computer science post-baccalaureate program I’ve found that the natural inclinations cited in the prior paragraph have driven me to great success in all my classes. I absolutely software engineering.
And now as I head into the home stretch of my OSU program I’m tasked with building one final showcase project for the capstone class. I’m excited to see what direction it takes and look forward to recording the journey here in this blog.