As the final course of my journey here at OSU is beginning, it seems like an opportune time to take a look back at everything that I have achieved over the last four years. Before OSU, I had originally obtained a degree in Aerospace Engineering. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it, so after bouncing around for a little bit, I ended up working with educational technology in a local school district. The more that I worked with the children in my school doing different coding and robotics activities, the more I remembered how fond I was of the programming that I had learned as part of my original Aerospace Engineering degree. This is what made me decide to enroll in OSU to try to make a career change and it has turned out to be a great choice.

I started here at OSU back in the Winter of 2018. My original plan was to take two courses a term, besides Summer of course. I worked in a middle school, so Summer break was still pretty important to me. The first term went pretty well and helped to acclimate me into a kind of self-paced learning environment. The second term however hit my like a truck. I don’t know if these courses are still as rough to take together as they were, but I was taking CS162 – Introduction to Computer Science II and CS 271 – Introduction to Computer Architecture and Assembly Language. Two classes that each had a ton of material to learn and work to do. Eventually I made it through the term in one piece, but because of that I knew that if I stuck to the program that there was no way I couldn’t make it through victorious.

When I was about halfway through the program I started looking for employment opportunities. Fortunately I was able to find someone that wanted to hire me as a software engineer. I was with that company for a year and then I changed jobs to another company which provided me the opportunity to work on projects that I was a bit more interested in. I am incredibly grateful to both of my employers for taking a chance on me. I’ve learned so much in this last 2 1/2 years. Of course with a full time software job, I was a little less motivated to be doing quite as many CS courses in my extra time, so I made the decision to cut back to only taking one course every term or sometimes every other term. I started the program and was determined to see it through, but I definitely started taking it at more of a snail’s pace.

And now we’re here in the present. The capstone course is beginning and I am excited to take what I’ve learned in school and professionally to do my part in making an incredible project. Here we go!