My group teammate and I have been working on our capstone project for a couple weeks now. I have put in so many hours that I have lost count. The first challenge of this capstone project was that I needed a refresher on the MERN stack and web development in general. I have spent my time during this program focused on learning programming fundamentals and using only Python and C languages. When it came to working on this project I was out of my comfort zone. I was rusty with JavaScript, NodeJS, React, and ExpressJs. I had to do my own research and put in hours towards relearning these technologies.
I first started by looking at my old Web Development coursework I completed two years ago. I skimmed through it and read through the modules. It was a good refresher and some things did come back to me. I followed along with multiple YouTube MERN stack tutorials. I would watch a video and code along. This was a very helpful strategy and I picked up the MERN stack within a couple weeks. If I had to guess how many hours of videos, I would have to guess around the ballpark of 80 hours. Sounds like a lot but it is very manageable if you spread it out a few weeks. As far as how the capstone project is going now, it is going very well. My teammate and I are making good progress and hope to finish up soon.
During the first weeks of this course, I reread an old textbook from the web development course. That textbook really helped me grasp JavaScript when I first started learning it. It brought back memories to a time when I was unsure if I was smart enough to get through the program. There was some doubt but I was determined to get through it. Then I started thinking about my time in the program.
I started the program in Winter 2021. I took a C++ computer science 1 course during the Fall of 2020 at a community college and loved basic coding. Prior to that C++ course, I had no experience with coding. I honestly only knew how to start a computer, play around with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, and install programs. I was not a tech person at all. I was exposed to computers in high school but I only used it for typing out my essays. Then years later I’m in a Computer Science program at Oregon State University. It was a very difficult program for me and I had to invest more hours to learn something than my fellow classmates. I am grateful that I had the help from the instructors, the TAs, and the computer science department. I was able to go through this program and reach the capstone class. A little over two years ago I did not know coding existed. That thought scares me today, but that is all in the past. Today I’m on track to graduate with my bachelors of science in computer science with a 3.6+ gpa from Oregon State University. I’m proud of myself for making it this far and will continue to have the mindset that hard work pays off.
-Adrian Melendrez
