Introduction

Hello everyone!

My name is Cameron Hollis, I’m 18 years old, and I am happy to say this is my final year of my Computer Science degree here at Oregon State University. I’m very grateful for my time here at Oregon State, and the flexibility of an online degree has been great with managing my time and being able to complete my degree while living such a long way away from campus. While I’ve enjoyed my time learning throughout the past 4 years, I’m excited to complete my degree and begin a new journey in the working world.

I grew up for most of my life living in Salem, Oregon, but moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico around four years ago. While I would like to say that I’ve mastered Spanish in the four years of living here, the truth is I still have a lot to learn about the language, particularly when it comes to speaking it.

Some of my hobbies, outside of coding, include regular visits to the beach, playing Magic the Gathering, and watching TV. Some of my favorite TV series include Brooklyn 99 (Nine Nine!), Suits, and The Big Bang Theory, while my favorite movies include Ready Player One, the Harry Potter series, and most of the Marvel movies.

It wasn’t until around my second year of college when I decided I wanted to pursue computer science. I had originally started studying to become an anesthesiologist, but I soon realized I wasn’t really passionate about that career. When exploring other options, I stumbled upon computer science and absolutely loved it. I then switched my major from psychology to computer science and the rest is history.

After completing most of my bacc core classes at a community college in Salem, Oregon, I decided to dual enroll at Oregon State to hopefully take some classes at OSU and others at the community college. From my time at Oregon State, I’ve gathered so much knowledge in regards to the field of computer science, with a particular interest of mine being web development. The ability to attend this University while living in Puerto Rico is definitely something I am grateful for, as it makes it much easier to manage other responsibilities and teaches a lot of self-management skills.

From June to the start of classes in late September, I got the opportunity to intern for a software consulting startup company based out of Puerto Rico, which was an absolutely amazing experience. I got to learn about many best practices in not only coding and development, but also working with team members and clients. I was also excited that, after the end of the internship, they offered me a part-time position I could continue with while studying. To this day, I’m still working for the same company and continue to learn and grow more as both a developer and a consultant.

While working for this company, I have spent most of my efforts on one particular project that was developed using a framework called Laravel. It’s PHP-based and is a full-stack framework, which I hadn’t worked with prior to my internship last summer. Since then, I feel like I’ve developed a very strong grasp of this framework and I think the capabilities of it make it one of my favorite technologies to work with. Aside from this, I also enjoy coding in Python or Javascript on for-fun projects.

At this moment, there are a few different projects that stand out as being potentially really interesting to me. The one I feel would be the most enjoyable for me to work on is the “Online Trading Card Game Maker.” I am a big fan of Magic the Gathering and, more recently, Lorcana, so being able to build a program that people can use to design their own TCGs would be a great way to incorporate one of my hobbies into my capstone project. Aside from this, another project that looks interesting is the “Opinionated Project Management Website.” I think this could be really interesting to develop and would also be something I could use outside of the capstone project, so it would be a more valuable project. At the moment, I’m still reviewing the other options listed in the Portal to see if anything else looks interesting, but these seem to be the most interesting things I’d enjoy developing.

Well, thank you to everyone who made it to the end of my first blog. I can’t wait to begin my capstone quest, and I look forward to reading more about my fellow classmates and their own experiences here at OSU. I’m excited to share my experiences over the course of this term and, if anyone has any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Good luck!