HOW I GOT TO OREGON STATE
Hello, my name is Sean Hallisey, and I am in my final quarter at Oregon State University. I am doing the post-baccalaureate degree because I have a previous degree in music education from Sam Houston State University. I wanted to be a beginning band teacher when I was younger, like in my high school/early college years. I wanted to be able to start the kids off and be able to watch them progress. I never really got a chance to start that career and did not have a backup plan if the music teacher career did not pan out how I wanted. So, I worked in customer service for many years after graduating and eventually stumbled upon Udemy and Colt Steele’s Web Developer Bootcamp, and enjoyed the process of creating a web app from scratch, but I did not feel comfortable with my abilities and sought after another Udemy course from Brad Schiff, and then another course, and another after that, and then Youtube how-to’s. Long story short I was stuck in what is known as ‘tutorial hell’. I would go from one beginner tutorial to another without knowing how to take the next leap. With the uncertainty of my abilities, I essentially gave up on these ventures even though I enjoyed creating something that could help solve a problem for other people. Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and I was left with uncertainty about the service industry and wasn’t really sure where to go next. I originally looked at going back to school, but nothing too serious, and figured now would probably be the best time for me to go back to school. I eventually made my decision, as I am sure most of the students finishing up a post-baccalaureate degree did, to start at Oregon State just after the pandemic.
TIME AT OREGON STATE
My time at OSU has been positive overall. Some classes were stinkers and some classes really stood out to me. CS225 Discrete Structures is the class that tested most, if not all students coming into the program. This class helped me get my ‘stuff’ together and laid the groundwork for how I would take on bigger classes. Another class that stands out is CS475 Parallel programming. If you are reading this as a person in their last term, you really missed out. If you are reading this as a person who still has the opportunity to take this class. You NEED to take this class. Professor Bailey makes this class special, and his engagement with the class is something you don’t get with this program as a whole and was a breath of fresh air.
HOBBIES/INTERESTS
One of my hobbies is video games. Much to the surprise of no one, I am sure that a CS major likes video games. Another hobby of mine is going to the movies with my wife. We have something called AMC A-List and we can see up to 3 movies a week and we both pay $20 a month. This hobby almost didn’t make it out of the pandemic, but I am really glad it did. My wife and I also have a corgi named Okapi (pronounced Oh-ka-Pee). We call her ‘P’ for short.
