As I continue through my second degree, this time in Computer Science, I keep in mind the different opportunities that this degree is suppose to bring. One in particular was to one day go to law school and become a patent lawyer, patent lawyers need to have some science/engineering degree that’s why I am majoring in Computer Science. Apart from this I also just want to explore what jobs I can do as a computer scientist. However, I am not thinking more and more about the “online” experience. And while it does feel overwhelming right now I think that the experience can provide a wealth of knowledge and experience that can get me those computer science jobs. However, can I sustain this high level of work is a different question.

In order for me to continue to work as an employee and as a student I will have really sharpen my skill set as someone who is a good planner. While I did an o.k. job of planning this past semester I can definitely do better. And not just planning but also executing and re-evaluating what I planned. I am realizing now that while I thought this was a strength in the online/work context I can improve. I am going to keep a planner and I will continue to use the goal setting strategies that I picked up in this class and apply them to each of my classes, in what goals do I want to have for my assignments for each class.

Another point of reflection is in my communication skills. I always saw myself as a good communicator however I am seeing that I can be a better one. One particular way of communicating through email or canvas mail I need to get better at. Specifically, I need to do a better job of aligning my communicating with my planning. What has been a reoccurring theme in my computer science class is that I start working on an assignment late into the week so late that I feel bad reaching out to my TA or my professor. Luckily they have been really understanding and have communicated back in a timely manner. However, I should start working on my assignments earlier in the week so that I can communicate with them earlier instead of me struggling and worrying later in the week.

As well, I want to start getting tutoring help that OSU provides for these computer science classes. While I never made the time for myself to do this I need to for next semester. This tutoring can possibly go a long way to prevent headaches and missed assignments but like all other things it needs to be planned and accounted for. Coupled from the help I get from my TA I should end up with a better grade and less stress.

My long term goal again is complete my degree but in all that I want to also start exploring now. I plan to expand my knowledge through a project outside of class. I have started on that project and I hope with the summer I have time to focus on that. I plan to also use some of the help I get for my classes to guide this project as well.  As well, I hope to use my planner to integrate working on this project on a weekly basis. As far as next steps goes I will start pseudo coding, which essentially is blue printing, the code for this project next week and from their start writing the code and finally fixing any bugs/testing. Each of those steps are going to require that accurately and consistently plan what I am doing and that I have others help me along the way.

The strengths that I have identified in myself really focus on how I am able to learn through various means and specifically how I can take what I have learned in class and apply it to personal projects. This strength is helpful, since if I take a class that requires a lot of writing I am well versed in that field while I can still take that skill and use it when I need to create something for a project.

Surprises that I have encountered in the first two weeks include how easily it is to misrepresent time in my schedule and how little goal setting I have done this term. When I plan out my week, I usually block out time during the evenings that I normally do like cook and exercise. However, I have underestimated how long it takes me to complete assignments in this class. I think I am going to shift from working on an assignment just one day to working on assignments multiple days to ensure I get completed results. As well, this week we learned of one specific type of goal setting, SMART, and in thinking about how I have done goal setting in the past I realized that I haven’t done much of that this year. And while I have general big idea goals, I really haven’t broken down those goals into smaller goals like the book suggests to do. I think I am going to go ahead and schedule some time this week, probably this Tuesday and do that goal setting. One example that immediately comes to mind how I want to have no debt, specifically academic debt in three years, just a year after I will have finished this program in getting a second bachelors in computer science, but I haven’t planned to apply to scholarships or set up a schedule of how I would pay my debt as I worked.

Struggles that represent the challenges of online learning include technological problems and bad time management. I have had some issues recently on getting my web browser to correctly represent different web pages that we use in class. This week when I was navigating to the pearson online tools the pages would not appear on my safari application on my laptop. I also noticed that some of the canvas web pages did not load as quickly or ad all when I used safari. In one case, when I tried to download a specific type of files (python) for my computer science class the files would download in html instead of python. As well, during the week my girlfriend had landed a job interview in a city four hours away on Monday. I was unable to reschedule what I had planned for the weekend and evenings in order to include this new event, where my girlfriend and I had to drive there and back. What is worst, when both struggles, technological and scheduling, happen at the same time it makes getting assignments done harder. As far as resolving this for the future, I plan to only use Firefox for my online classes. I will also start completing assignments on Sunday the first complete day of the week to work on online assignments.