printf(“Hello CS World!”);

With this being my last term in the post-baccalaureate CS program here at Oregon State and the job hunt starting to ramp up, I think it’s worth taking a brief look back at how I even got here in the first place.

First and foremost, I think finding myself in the CS world was very much a happy accident. Growing up, I had a lot of interest in three main things, technology, history, and politics. The perfect blend of things for a kid as we all know. I settled on politics/government after graduating high school.  I got my first degree in Political Science from Penn State, and was initially looking to find a job in the government, but also wanted to see some more of the world. So, I naturally settled on joining the Peace Corps to teach English for a few years, and then come back to get a government job using my Peace Corps connections.

First roadblock ended up being the closure of some Peace Corps locations, which of course included the one I had been assigned to. So I got reassigned to Mongolia; neat! Unfortunately I never even got to get on the plane for that either, as we managed to have a very unpleasant pandemic pop up at the same time.

As a result, I found myself with a difficult decision; do I try to wait out a pandemic for however long that takes until the Peace Corps opens back up, or do I try to switch to something else? I chose to make a switch (not to CS yet though). I ended up getting a private position teaching English in Taipei.

I packed my bags, flew out, and got to hang out in a quarantine hotel for a few weeks before starting my job. Teaching took some getting used to, but I was having a good time with it overall. Things went well for a while, until the pandemic finally arrived there as well. We moved from in-person classes to teaching online. Let me tell you, teaching young kids over a video call is a near impossibility. As a result of that fun little twist, parents also started pulling their kids out of the classes as they felt they weren’t learning properly. That meant a smaller paycheck for me as I had less classes to teach.

At that point, I had to sit down and ponder whether or not I should try to pick up another teaching job, and if I really want to make an entire career out of teaching. I received some advice from friends and family that I should consider just going back to school for one of my other two interests. I took this to heart and started looking for school options. My research led me to Oregon State’s program, and I applied after coming back to the United States.

I had always had at least a passing interest in programming, but getting started with the program really drove home that I had made the right choice going back to school. I found I was having a lot of fun from the very start of my classes; it just felt like I was doing something that I could both enjoy and be good at.

Now, here I am writing a blog for my capstone class at the end of the program. I’m looking forward to the upcoming job hunt, the Leetcode grinding, and my work in my last classes of the program. I’ll run into plenty of walls as I continue, hair will be pulled, and groans of frustration will be uttered, but that’s all part of the fun; after all, the past two years have taught me that nothing compares to getting that program working or squashing that relentless bug.

Thanks for reading, check in later for another installment where you may just see a lighthearted version of that hair-pulling and running into walls!