I’m excited to be wrapping up my final quarter in OSU’s Post Bacc program, with CS467. What better way to start my course blog than reflecting on my OSU journey over the past 2 years.

I’ll start with my decision to attend OSU, let’s set the scene. It was early Fall 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had ravaged the employment market and I was a fresh graduate from the University of New Hampshire business school working in email marketing. I decided I wanted to go into the more technical side of digital marketing and started to teach myself JavaScript through online courses. After a few short weeks I knew, this is what I was meant to be doing.

I began relentless researching coding bootcamps and online Computer Science degree programs before eventually settling on OSU’s Post Bacc program. Two years late I’m glad to say I might the right decision. This program has empowered me to change careers to software engineering and I couldn’t be happier. It was certainly not an easy journey though.

Throughout most of the program I was working full time, in Fall 2021 I quit my marketing job to become a ULA for CS290 (intro to web development) a course I loved and am happy to say I’ve returned as a ULA for the Fall 2022 term. After a long internship hunt, and grueling Fall 2021 quarter I had landed two internship offers, one for winter and one for summer. From January 2022 to May 2022 I took worked as a Software Engineering Intern at The TJX companies, and survived the beast that is CS344. Then from June 2022 through August 2022 I worked as a Software Engineering Intern at Publicis Sapient, a consulting firm headquartered in Boston.

As I reflect on the program the memories that come to mind are primarily late night debugging session where I was often yelling into the void of the VSCode terminal in front of me. While at the time I was very upset, and just wanted to will the code to work, it’s these moments that let me realize just how far I’ve come as a developer. I went from failing the first recursion assignment in CS161 and getting a B+ in the class to teaching other students how to build full-stack apps in CS290.

This Fall I am finishing my final quarter at OSU, a spot I never thought I would get to, especially when I was debugging CS344 assignments! I can say without hesitation that this program has helped me learn the skills needed to succeed as a software engineer. I am especially grateful for the help of the OSU student community. Peers have helped me with everything, from navigating the program financially, understanding hard technical concepts and providing the motivation to keep going when times were hard.

My next big step is to take a year to settle into my full-time software development role. Then hopefully, I’ll be accepted into and enroll in Georgia Tech’s online master’s in Computer Science program. If that program is even half as valuable and impactful as my time at OSU than I’ll be more than satisfied. First things first however, I’ll be wrapping up this final term and recording my journey here!