Hello there! My name is Nicholas Ledbetter and this blog will detail my experiences in the OSU Senior Capstone Project.

A little about myself – I am a 27 year old first-time college student attending courses through the OSU eCampus. I first went to Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon before moving to Corvallis right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a year of forced online courses, I realized that I actually prefer this modality of learning and swapped to eCampus full time. I currently live in Huntsville, AL with my Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Sable, and my German Shepherd Dog, Shakedown.

I had a pretty non-traditional life prior to college. I traveled the country for years, mostly hitchhiking, and trading labor for boarding and food. I had great grades in high school, but just didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I am a life-long nerd, and have always been a heavy consumer of computer games, which bolstered my computer skills over time significantly – and I finally decided that Software Engineering was the career I wanted to pursue. The combination of intense problem-solving and the possibility of remote work seemed like the perfect fit for me, and I am very glad that I chose to go down this path.

So far, my favorite technologies that I have worked with are Web/Mobile development based. I have done a few Web Application projects for school using Node.js/MYSQL, as well as teaching myself some ReactJS and Android Studio in my free-time. Data Science is one area of technology which I know virtually nothing about, but am very interested in. That being said, I am very excited about the project for which I was selected in this course – it is a Mobile Application project which has some pretty cool real world use cases.

To forego the risk of rambling on incessantly, I am going to wrap up this Intro. I am excited to meet with my team and sponsor, and see what the rest of this long-awaited course brings! I appreciate this opportunity that OSU provides to students to create a more robust project for their portfolio and look forward to getting to work!