CS462 Initial Blog Post

My journey with computers and computer science has been an interesting one, starting back as far as elementary school. Sometime in third grade our elementary school got a large grant that they put towards a very sizeable computer lab. The school used this lab to teach us all how to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint at a very basic level. And all through fourth and fifth grade we were using computers and playing around with all sorts of basic applications.

Moving into middle school, my school offered what they deemed “computer science” classes. These classes talked nothing of computers or how they work, and were instead based around typing games and simple graphic design. It wasn’t until partway through my seventh grade year that my serious interest in computers started. In one of my “computer science” classes, a friend of mine taught me how to download Minecraft and mod it. Learning this really opened my eyes to just how complex and interesting computers really are.

Then came high school where I was able to take my first IT class. These classes were based around the Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) curriculum, and at the end of each year we were able to take as many MTA exams as we wanted, as long as we had taken the prerequisite IT class. This resulted in me taking an IT class every quarter, and I ended up graduating high school with five professional MTA certifications.

Even though I loved computers, I didn’t go into college with a computer science degree. When I was a freshman here I had no idea what I wanted to do, I just knew that I liked technology and math. Because I was so unsure, I declared a “general engineering” major. My first year in college consisted of mostly math and chemistry courses, along with some BACC core to see if anything sparked my interest. It wasn’t until halfway through my sophomore year that I took my first mechanical engineering class. It was a class based around MATLAB, and I remember being the only person in my class that enjoyed it. Everyone else wanted to work with physical labs instead of coding, which made me realize that I was probably in the wrong type of class. I talked to my advisor and he helped me realize that computer science is the correct major for me, and I haven’t looked back since.