Two weeks ago I sat down at my computer, planning to casually browse the available capstone projects. Over the last few months I had seen several threads popup on Reddit soliciting group members, with long explanations of project ideas, a lot of which didn’t make much sense to me. They all seemed like very niche topics that I had no knowledge of. At that moment it seemed pretty clear that I would be better off working a project from the class provided list. I just had no idea what was going to be on that list and boy was I shocked when I started looking it over. NDA requirements, stock market trading strategies, self-driving simulators. I shut my computer. I was in way over my head.
A few days later, I found my self back on Reddit. I saw a post from someone a few terms ago that seemed to be in the same mental space as myself. They were feeling underprepared and inadequate. But then I read it -“…self teaching is to be expected…because that’s how tech works. The sooner you can get into the mindset that research and self learning is required the better you will do in this industry. There is a ton of help if you want it but you have to search, ask, read, be willing to try things that may not work, and then be willing to START OVER and TRY AGAIN to get that help. This is essence is what being in school is all about.”(Shout out to u/Significant_Mtheme37) Aha! This final project is my opportunity to pick out exactly what I want to learn from this program. Once I changed my mindset, picking just one project I wanted to work on seemed impossible. I have a background in emergency telecommunications, should I pick the Fire Risk Predictor? I love a good bottle of wine, what about Wine Data Lake? The job hunt is right around the corner, why not help write the Job Tracker?
I can now happily announce that my group and I are well on our way to creating a Citizen Science app to be used by K-12 students and teachers. Additionally, over the last few days I have been enjoying learning React-Native, researching noSql databases and brushing up on my web development knowledge. I am excited to continue learning from my teammates and on my own.
