Career Thoughts

During a virtual coffee chat, I met my name twin. Her name was Pratiksha and I was Patricia. We were doing an icebreaker and would respond at the same time when being called. We both laughed at the coincidence of the situation. In some ways, our name influences who we are. Having a last name that starts with the letter B has been a curse in an academic setting when students must present in an alphabetical order. That said, all the people with last names that start with letter A go first so at least I can witness the initial failures. In a large company, there is an increased chance of finding a name twin. As the lead email address creator in my current role, I have had to unfortunately bear the bad news to new hires of an existing name twin and ask if they would prefer a nickname over a number being appended. I can feel the pain. I keep trying to get variations of Patricia or Tricia when I select usernames online despite knowing that there are already 100 million people on said platform. That said, there are benefits to having a common name. I rarely get asked how to spell it and I have a good chance of finding my name on a keychain in a souvenir shop.

Capstone Update

In this phase of the project, I have had to create test data when submitting forms and displaying tables. I realized that I cannot continue naming things ‘Test’ and ‘Hello World’ upon submitting things. I have developed a new appreciation for testing and quality assurance. Our team is using Google Firestore, a NoSQL database. Its support for Flutter made it an attractive option. We are all new to it and it has been a fun learning experience. I can submit data that does not make sense and Firestore will gladly store it. I have previously used MySQL which is more structured in comparison. The freedom comes with increased responsibility. I have had to verify in Firestore that it is receiving the data I intended to send. I learn best by doing. In the process, I realized I accidentally submitted a few documents to Firestore with empty fields. Impressively, our application handled this well and proudly displayed the empty data as blank spaces without crashing. Despite this experience, I have come to like NoSQL and would consider using it for my next projects.

Personal Update

While pursuing OSU’s Post-Bacc in CS and working full time, my free time is limited. I was thinking about all the things I will do after I graduate. Will I save the world? Will I experience another life crisis and enroll in another academic program? One thing for certain is I want to travel again. My last international trip was in November 2019, right before everyone knew what coronavirus is. There are uncertainties as well. When I finally work as a software developer, will I even like it? Will I apply what I learned? I like my current job role, work culture, and feel comfortable. My workplace has been supportive of me during this program. However, a part of me wants to go on this adventure and try something different.  This next chapter in my life presents so many possibilities and I am excited.