Welcome to the first post of my new blog! I’ll be using this space to reflect on my journey through the Computer Science Post-Bacc program at Oregon State, as I prepare to begin interviewing for my first job in tech.

For this first post, I’m going to take the opportunity to reflect on my journey thus far through the program. This quarter, Spring of 2022, will be my final quarter in the program. As I look forward to graduating, I feel a mixture of satisfaction and pride with all the knowledge I’ve obtained as well as excitement and apprehension for the continued learning process I’ll be undertaking once I begin a professional career. I think that my current feelings about my study of computer science can be best explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect – I now know just enough about the fundamentals of programming to appreciate how much more there is to learn.

Given that I couldn’t learn everything there is to know (or even close) about software development during my time at Oregon State, it’s helpful to take stock of what I do have to take away. Most importantly, in my view, I have grown to love learning about programming – new technologies, frameworks, languages, etc. Researching the tools necessary to complete a specific project has become a big part of the development process, and one I’ve found that I enjoy. There are more resources at my fingertips online to research software programming then there have ever been before, and my time at OSU has helped me to become comfortable with searching out those resources.

Studying computer science has helped me realized the power of learning a topic through several different angles. As an approach to learning something difficult, the combination of going over course lectures and materials, then watching a YouTube video explanation from one of my favorite CS channels, then reading a written explanation, can all add up to more than the sum of each individual approach. I’ve found the work of Abdul Bari on YouTube to be especially helpful when it comes to studying algorithms topics, for example. Reviewing different ways of explaining a complicated algorithm until it finally clicks has become my go to approach to studying.

As I reflect on the strategies I’ve learned to depend on to get me through this program thus far, I feel confident that my love of learning and the incredible resources that the software engineering community has built over the years will be more than enough to get through whatever challenges are ahead!

Well, that’s all for today’s thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to read this post and I’ll see you next time!