My journey started many years ago when I first enrolled into California State University of Long Beach (CSULB) in 2010. I was a young Padawan at the time and did not know much about the world or what I wanted to do with my life. I battled with myself internally, thinking about the best career for myself. I started off interested in the Computer Engineering major but did not have any faith in myself at the time and ultimately enrolled in as an Accounting major. Little did I know, I would end up as a Software Engineer 10 years later.
To continue on explaining about how I ended up here at Oregon State University, we’ll go back to when I finished my first degree in Accounting at CSULB. Things started to change a few years after working in the field and I thought to myself “do I enjoy this?” and began looking back into Computer Science. I started to teach myself Computer Science by reading books and watching as many videos as I could get my hands on. I applied to Oregon State University and while waiting for my acceptance letter, I landed a job as a Software Engineer at a fintech company in San Diego, CA. My start date was the same day I started at OSU, January 2021. I have worked as a software engineer and been a student at OSU for about 2 years now.
Throughout my time on this journey, I’ve come across many languages and technologies. Contrary to many people, I prefer Java or Python. OSU teaches most of their courses in Java but I feel that Java, although verbose, makes more sense to me. I also use it daily at my current job so I’m a bit more skilled with it than Python. I also loved learning React, however I still have a ways to go since my front-end skills are still a bit lacking. I definitely lean more back-end heavy but that’s only because I feel that most of the classes at OSU focus on the back-end and my current job is almost entirely back-end work.
To conclude, I still have much to learn. I enjoyed every minute of my time here at OSU as I approach graduation in a few months – even the late nights crying while working on SmallSH (a shell project in our Operating Systems class that probably took me 60 hours to complete by the two week deadline). Nevertheless, I’m having fun learning at OSU and at my job; software engineering is a tough but satisfying career. I love solving problems and seeing your work come into fruition when users begin adopting your application.
Please feel free to drop a comment and let me know how you got started on your journey!
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