When I first started this program, I had a lot of expectations, and some of them I was pretty sure about. For example, I was pretty sure that my free time would evaporate, and that the program would begin to stress pretty much every part of my life. I was also pretty sure that I’d learn a lot, and I was hopeful that I’d grow enough over the next two years to transition into a new career. However, one thing I hadn’t considered at all was the possibility of discovering, and becoming a part of, a community while pursuing an online degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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My first exposure to the OSU Post-Bacc CS community was on Reddit, and it’s there that I actually first learned about this program. After reading through a few threads of some alumni and current students and seeing that even despite some criticism they recommended others check it out, I was intrigued enough to apply. While waiting to hear back on my application, I found myself browsing the subreddit from time to time and noticed a post about an unofficial slack open to current and former students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I really enjoyed using slack at work and figured that if nothing else it would be a great place to ask questions as I started up this new degree. So, after my application was accepted, I quickly used my new school email to get access to that slack and found myself in huge channels filled with thousands of different people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I spent the first few months in the slack as a quiet lurker – the channels were so large that I didn’t feel like I should just announce my presence directly, and I felt like it was appropriate for me to get a feel for the community and its culture first. What I discovered was something that surprised me – I began to notice several regulars on many of the channels, and I started to develop a familiar feel with the kinds of discussions that would spring up from time to time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Gradually, I started to join in on those discussions, and all of my initial hesitations started to fade away. I found myself on some of the major channels of the unofficial slack conversing (and sometimes arguing, looking at you #politics) with many of my peers in this program. While there were only a handful of people that I ever actually had a class with, I’ve really felt like I’ve gotten to know a lot of people on the unofficial slack – something that’s made easy by the fact that we all share a common theme of uprooting our lives to pursue another degree. There are many people who I’ve never directly interacted with, but know a lot about, just because of the reputation they’ve built for themselves in the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Over these past two years, I’ve always felt that the unofficial slack was the place I could go to with any question about a class, about the program, or about computer science and software engineering in general. I even found my current capstone project team in this community – two guys who I’d seen post on the unofficial slack on and off again for the past two years, but never had more than a passing conversation with. Needless to say, while the unofficial slack wasn’t something that I expected, it is something that I’m deeply thankful for and plan to stay a part of after I graduate in December. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first started this program, I had a lot of expectations, and some of them I was pretty sure about. For example, I was pretty sure that my free time would evaporate, and that the program would begin to stress pretty much every part of my life. I was also pretty sure that I’d… Continue reading An Unofficial Community<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11696,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11696"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/pfitz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}