Senior Year as a CS Major

Closing out the term.

I can’t believe another term is almost finished again already. This quarter I took CS 450 Computer Graphics, CS 321 Theory of Computation, and CS 469 Real World Project Management (in addition to CS 461 Senior Software Engineering Project – capstone – of course).

I’m happy to report that just ahead of my last assignments and finals, I have all As – an I hope to keep it that way! I’ve learned so much this term. CS 461 has taught me a lot about preparing for large-scale team projects and project managament. CS 321 has brought me back to proofs and gotten me much more comfortable with them, and made me so excited about Turing machines that I couldn’t help but share some basics with my husband. CS 450 has allowed me to be creative with my code, and I already have more graphics projects in mind for working on in my free time after the term. CS 469 has given me the opportunity to work on a fun side project (I made a pretty simple clicker game) that I look forward to adding on to in the future. I’m really happy that I took care of some of the more dense degree requirements earlier on and saved interesting and fun electives for my senior year. I feel like it’s been great for combatting any senior fatigue I have because I’m excited to go through course material and to create projects.

I’m looking forward to next term, where in addition to CS 462, I’ll be taking CS 457 Shaders, CS 492 Mobile Software Development, and CS 391 Social and Ethical Issues in Computer Science. Excluding 391 (which I am still excited about – there are so many ethical questions in the world of computer science right now), these are electives again and I’m so happy about my schedule.

I’m feeling really motivated right now – in all honesty, I usually am at the tail end of a term – and I’m working quickly to finish the remaining assignments and projects I have left. I’m hoping that this motivation will carry through to the next term and make the time fly by! I know my last quarter will be a breeze just because the end will be so close, but at six months out I still need a bit of a push to really feel like I’m really this close to getting my degree.

Looking forward to enjoying the winter break and some holiday time out around Korea and at home, best wishes to everyone out there and hope that your break is also safe, relaxing, and fun!

Hello again!

Now that we’re past the halfway point of Fall term, I feel so much more confident about the rest of the year ahead. My team communicates well and we’ve been able to divide work so far well according to our own strengths, which is great! I really feel that each of us brings unique skills to the table that help us to be more successful at each deliverable stage. We’re all excited about our project, which has been really nice. A good lesson for me in our work so far is that it’s easy to get carried away adding features and functionality on a project you are really interested in. Luckily, between discussions amongst ourselves and with our mentor, we’ve been able to pare things down to a really nice minimum viable product with plenty of stretch goals to keep us going if we really hit a roll with development. That’s been a great team experience for me that I’ll keep in mind for the future.

Career-wise I have some exciting news! Our fellowship cohort finally (yesterday) received the list of potential overseas internship placements for Summer 2024. As I live in South Korea, I have been doing my best to advocate for the possibility of going to Seoul for my internship (avoiding incredibly expensive travel costs that would be my responsibility). I’m happy to report that it was on the list! While it isn’t a guaranteed placement for me, the possibility now definitely exists, and I hope to get it. Otherwise, there are some nearby options in Asia that I hope to get, so we’ll see! I won’t have news regarding a tentative placement until likely mid-December, so probably not in time for an update here, but wish me luck! Summer 2023 was a domestic internship for my fellowship in Washington, DC. It was fun and an exciting learning experience, but the overseas one next year will allow me to see what my career for (at least) five years following graduation will be like. Everything I’ve heard from previous cohorts about the overseas experience has been extremely positive, so I’m getting really excited about the next adventure!

Still lots to learn in the meantime, so I’ll try to keep plenty of focus on the rest of the school year (though also happy to report that this term has been great for all of my classes so far, all A’s for now!).