Finally, two-ish years later, I am on my final quarter at OSU. Getting a degree and working full time has been a lot of work, and adding job interview preparations on top of all of this makes me glad the finish line is so close. I’m currently working as a biochemist, and although it would be interesting to continue working in the biotech field on the software engineering job, it would also be great to work at a more traditional tech company.
As for me, I like to do a lot of things; rock climbing and photography I’ve been into the longest (below is an image of me climbing at Smith Rock, and an image showcasing the beauty of Leavenworth) and by extension and am most proficient at, but also have picked up a couple other hobbies as an adult, like basketball and skateboarding. I’d like to thank those two hobbies in particular for helping in my programming/computer science journey. Namely, they taught me the importance in learning how to work hard to be better at something you’re not naturally gifted in. Rock climbing and photography came fairly easy to me; skateboarding and basketball did not. I was not used to being bad at something; clanking a jump shot or fumbling an ollie over and over again got pretty frustrating for me, but I really, really wanted to get better at them. And so I did! Not that it was easy by any means; hours and hours spent grinding away until the sun was well below the horizon. But, I did get better slowly over time, through well-coordinated, repeated, and intentional practice. Seeing the journey I started from not being even able to dribble a basketball to easily holding my own on the court was immensely gratifying, and when I took up computer science, I made sure to keep that in mind. Whenever I was getting stuck on a problem or unable to grasp a complicated piece of logic, I could slow down and remind myself that it was hard now, but I could make it easier, if I just kept working slowly at it.
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