I started the Oregon State Computer Science Post-Bacc program in summer 2021, and I am excited to graduate this March. My original goal was to finish in 2023, but it has taken a little longer than that since I decided to take one class at a time most terms. I think this was a good decision because it helped prevent me from getting burned out, and it allowed me take time to digest the coursework with the more challenging classes (looking at you, Algorithms).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My two favorite classes have been Data Structures because I thought the assignments were well-designed (and I just love data) and Open Source Software because I got to study and work on real-world projects. To my own surprise, I also really enjoyed the lower-level programming courses like Operating Systems and Computer Architecture\/Assembly Language. I probably won’t use C or assembly in my career, but learning how computers work “under the hood” has been cool and deepened my understanding of computer science and programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I appreciate the flexibility of this program which allowed me work full time so that I could continue to advance in my career. When I started the program, I worked as a lab technician, and since then I have advanced into a bioinformatics position within my organization, which would have not been possible without the programming skills I developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I’m almost finished with this second degree, I don’t think my academic journey is quite finished yet. Although this program has provided a great foundation for software development, I’m interested in pursuing a computer science master’s degree in data-science-focused topics that my coursework did not cover, like machine learning, artificial intelligence, informatics, computational statistics, and “big data”. I find these topics fascinating and I think studying them will make me more competent within the field of bioinformatics and expand my knowledge of computer science in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I started the Oregon State Computer Science Post-Bacc program in summer 2021, and I am excited to graduate this March. My original goal was to finish in 2023, but it has taken a little longer than that since I decided to take one class at a time most terms. I think this was a good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sambaird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}