{"id":6,"date":"2022-03-31T22:59:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/?p=6"},"modified":"2022-03-31T22:59:12","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:59:12","slug":"beginning-of-the-end-of-my-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/2022\/03\/31\/beginning-of-the-end-of-my-degree\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginning of the end… of my degree."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It feels surreal to be starting my Capstone project already. I felt so lost just a couple years ago when the world shut down for COVID-19, and now here I am\u2026 close to graduating with a whole new degree! But how did I get to this point? Well a little backstory about me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I graduated back in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science majoring in Biology. I had originally intended on moving into either research or healthcare, but I was having trouble deciding on exactly what I wanted to do. Most jobs would require a graduate degree and I didn\u2019t feel like spending that much more money on school if I wasn\u2019t 100% sure the path was right. Once the pandemic shut things down I was left with more time to reflect and I realized that I wanted a job that involved problem-solving, even if it wasn\u2019t biology related. My partner is a software engineer so I started asking them more and more questions about their job and was surprised by how interesting I found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first I was hesitant about switching over to computer science, after all it was very different from anything else I\u2019ve done before. I started by learning basic Python on my own. You know the drill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

print(\"Hello World\")<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed learning Python. It felt like I was just doing little puzzles (and I love puzzles!) so I immediately started looking into programs and long story short I started at Oregon State University in June of 2020. Best decision I\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly to how I\u2019ve been learning programming languages throughout my program, I am also fascinated with real-life languages. I\u2019m excited that post-graduation I\u2019ll have more time to learn them! Currently I\u2019m fluent in English (as you may have already guessed at this point) and can hold a conversation in Spanish. I\u2019m not sure which language I\u2019ll pick up next but right now I\u2019m thinking about German, French, Tagalog, Japanese, and so many more. I\u2019ll likely find somewhere I want to visit and then give myself two years to learn the language before I go there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One last thing! My first post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning my puppy, Bowen. Back in September my partner and I adopted her and she takes up most of my free time these days. She\u2019s eight months old now, but everyone assumes she\u2019s older because she\u2019s growing so fast! She\u2019s a major scaredy cat (I guess she missed the memo about being a dog) but she\u2019s still young and overcoming her fears. I long for the day that she realizes the recycling bins in my building are, in fact, not the boogeyman\u2026 If only I could use my coding skills to help:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
scared_of_recycling_bins = False<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
2 months old<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
5 months old<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
8 months old<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It feels surreal to be starting my Capstone project already. I felt so lost just a couple years ago when the world shut down for COVID-19, and now here I am\u2026 close to graduating with a whole new degree! But how did I get to this point? Well a little backstory about me\u2026 I graduated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12256,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/nhlpz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}