As I come to the end of my academic journey at OSU and start to look back at the career transition I\u2019ve slowly been making, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on how I ended up here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve always been interested in technology and felt that everything related to computers came naturally to me. However, my start with programming was the complete opposite. In High School I took my first computer science class \u2013 AP Computer Science. I had an extremely hard time grasping the concepts in the course and ultimately ended up dropping out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my first bachelor\u2019s degree while majoring in business, I ended up taking two programming classes as electives. One focused on Python and the other C++. Both of the classes also turned out to be difficult for me, but I stuck with it. Once I made progress, I found the work to be extremely rewarding. It was so satisfying to put in the hours in a project and come out with something that compiled and ran successfully. Funny enough, I ended up spending more time and effort in those classes then I ever did in my business classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After those classes, I considered taking additional computer science classes to earn a minor in the subject. With graduation and internships fast approaching though, it wasn\u2019t in the cards for me at that time. It wasn\u2019t until after graduation while I was working in a business analyst role that I started to pick up programming again. One of my tasks involved manipulating large amounts of data in an excel spreadsheet. I absolutely despise manual, menial tasks and desperately tried to think of a more efficient way to get the job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought back to my experience in class with Python and manipulating text data. After going down a Google rabbit hole, I found that yes, this was my answer. One resource I found was Automating the Boring Stuff with Python<\/a>. There could not have been a more perfectly titled book for someone in my position. It ended up containing exactly the information I needed \u2013 how to manipulate excel files with Python. It took me a while, but I started to recall bits and pieces of what we had learned in class \u2013 logic, control statements, data structures \u2013 and it started to make sense. I was able to apply that knowledge in a functional way and come up with something that made my job a lot easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a lot of fun with this and started to look for opportunities anywhere I could to automate pieces of my job. I built little apps and scripts whenever I could. To be honest, a lot of this was code was pretty sloppy and if I could look back it now, I\u2019m sure I would laugh. But I learned a lot by applying this knowledge in a practical setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually the Python scripts turned into web development and JavaScript. I was eager to understand and learn as much as I could about software engineering. It was at this point, while I was also frustrated with my current career path, that I decided I was going to take computer science seriously and I enrolled in the program at OSU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even when I first started taking the first introductory Python courses at OSU, I was able to reflect on my experience so far. I had learned so much building projects on my own, that the concepts I had first struggled with in earlier programming courses were all starting to make sense. Now, it\u2019s crazy to even think about the questions that confused me when I first started. I remember reading forever on Google trying to figure out how a web app could be made from Python. After making my first Node.js app, it bewildered me that someone could make a webpage that updated results without having to submit the page again (JavaScript and client-side requests, of course!). It\u2019s amazing how much you can learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess all of this to say that it can be a long process when trying to make a career transition or learn a topic like computer science. And the funny part is, the more experience I gain, the more I discover that I have still yet to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I come to the end of my academic journey at OSU and start to look back at the career transition I\u2019ve slowly been making, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on how I ended up here. I\u2019ve always been interested in technology and felt that everything related to computers came naturally to… Continue reading Learning<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/alecbarnard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}