Post #1

Picking a project when you don’t want to pick anything

A common line people in the r/CS subreddits say to others looking at getting into software development is “You have to love to code–eat, sleep, and breathe that s***!” But how can you love it if you are struggling with imposter syndrome, seeing all these amazing things other people are doing while you’re over here only barely able to cobble a website together? Am I not fit to become a software engineer if I didn’t get into it because I wanted to build video games? This week’s task was to choose a project to do for my capstone and I struggled with the choices.

“You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Coming from a non-tech background, I came into the CS post-bacc program with only 2 vague goals: (1) to switch careers so I could finally get out of my parent’s basement, and (2) to build programs that would improve a person’s daily life. How number 2 would be accomplished I hoped the program would equip me reasonably enough to achieve it. The final hurdle in finishing the program is the capstone project, which by definition is suppose to be “the culminating and usually integrative experience of an educational program”. I assumed that meant to do a project utilizing everything I learned from the program, nothing more, nothing less. Looking at the majority of the available projects being for video games though, I was at a loss–was there some secret class I didn’t know people were taking to know how to do this? Did I waste my time going to summer school instead of working on hobby projects and have now screwed myself over? Were those trolls on r/CS right? Even the non-video game projects felt daunting, calling for machine learning and/or AI.

…Well, ok then. Calm down. The most important lesson this program taught me was how to think logically, and right now, my choices were to sink or swim. Remember my original goals: if I don’t go thru with this I can’t switch careers, and therefore I’m gonna be stuck living with my parents until they die, which will probably be never, so that means for the rest of my life. This means I have to put my pants on and just go for it! My grades up until this point weren’t terrible so I’m sure I can at least slog thru it, whatever project it is. Recalling that my other goal was to make apps for improving daily life–even if I can’t do what the project is asking for now, I can learn, and if it’s for something I believe in/aligns with my goal then I’ll have more motivation to do it. I ending up choosing the non-video game projects I felt helped society/the environment/animals. Heres to praying now that my randomly chosen group for the project I’m assigned to will have a better clue and patience to guide me thru it!