Capstone Introduction

Hello everyone – my name is Peyton Fitzgerald, and this is my first blog post as part of my capstone course for my Computer Science degree with Oregon State University. For this introduction, I feel that it is appropriate to discuss my introduction to computers in general, as well as to this program at OSU.

I was first introduced to computers through my Father, or more specifically through his appreciation of late 90’s video games. Some of my earliest memories are sitting down at a PC playing Starcraft and Diablo 2 as a small toddler sitting on my Dad’s lap.

Since then, I’ve held a strong interest in PCs – mostly computer hardware as a result of years of building and customizing PCs with whatever parts I could get my hands on for gaming –  though my interest in software never developed past some minor script-kiddie stuff in my high school years. While I started my first undergraduate experience with the intent of getting a degree in Computer Science, I only completed two terms before I switched into an entirely different direction with degrees in Economics and Arabic at James Madison University.

While I ended up landing a really nice job with the MITRE Corporation after graduating from undergrad 1.0 in 2017, I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing in my career, and I always felt a combination of envy and guilt (I suppose from my original abandonment of CS) when comparing myself to software engineers at my company.

As a result, two years after finishing my first two undergraduate degrees, I started undergrad 2.0 by pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science here at OSU. Now two (more) years later I’m in my last term at OSU and I’m already in the midst of executing an internal transfer at my company to a new role as a Software Engineer. While some of my time at work is still spent on my old work, I spend a great deal of time every day getting paid to write code and I couldn’t be happier!

I hope this serves as a good introduction to me and my motivations for pursuing this degree, and I look forward to making additional posts here as the term progresses.