The First
Hello World! I first debated on getting into computer science when I was a senior in high school, again as a sophomore in college when I took an Intro to CS course, and then finally a year after graduating from university with degrees in chemistry and philosophy with the original intention of going to medical school. I started this program in the Winter 2019 Term and I’m excited to graduate at the end of this term.
I haven’t chosen a project yet. I’m honestly overwhelmed by the choices. I feel like I could do any of them. The projects most interesting to me so far are the AR Arcade Classics and AR Popup Storybook Companion App since I’ve always enjoyed AR/VR and would enjoy making a mobile application. The AI/ML projects in stock market and bitcoin are interesting as investing has really blown up since the beginning of the pandemic a few years ago. I sure know I’ve lost some money in the market so maybe the trick is to let robots take care of the trading for us? Finally, locally I’ve seen a few jobs advertise embedded software engineer positions, so getting some experience from building an embedded software project could be helpful in landing a job.
Whichever project I end up with, I hope to learn a lot as I feel the majority of my experience in building projects so far is very heavily web development focused, Intro to Web Dev, Intro to Databases, and the Cloud Application Development classes all heavily leaned into this area so getting some experience building a project that’s not just a website would be great. Bonus points if the project ends up being something I can add to my resume, portfolio website, and GitHub!
I’ll end by briefly mentioning that I’m very much a team player. While I do work full time I always make time in my day to dedicate to class and, lately, LeetCode, so anyone can count on me to be holding up my end of the project and doing what needs to be done. I’m not too worried about working in groups because it honestly usually makes the projects easier as all of our heads together are better than one. I’m looking forward to meeting my teammates and making a cool project together.
If anyone is needing to reach me they can email me at hawkcase@oregonstate.edu.
Casey Hawkins
March 29th, 2023
