What led me to Computer Science and where do I want to go?

Like everyone, you don’t just wake up one day instantly knowing what you want to do or what your interests are. It is always a gradual progression of being introduced to something. For me, computers have always been a part of my life and identity.

I owe most of my interest into computers to that family Dell Dimension that every family had. It ran games like The Sims easily enough. It wasn’t until my older brother bought a new game called FEAR to play on it that I started to learn how PCs work. It was playable, but it was on the lowest settings possible. Why I wondered? I started to research more and more into PC specs and figured out that our Dell was not enough. As any nine year old(Yes, my parent’s did not know the game was rated M.), I couldn’t convince my parents to buy a new family computer or upgrade it. I knew there was only one way to play it and all it’s glory, to build one. It took me a few years of saving so unfortunately I couldn’t buy one to play FEAR immediately, but I finally was able to build my first computer. This allowed me to introduce my friends to building PCs and make new friends from it. Computer hardware was always my jam.

So easy decision to start a career in computers right? Not really. I viewed computers as my hobby and I didn’t want to mix that with my life. I decided to purse a career track to be a physician assistant out of high school. I earned a degree in Biology and started working in a hospital laboratory to get patient hours. I started to realize that it wasn’t meant for me and experienced real burnout. I liked patients and staff I worked with, but I wanted something different. I wanted to ultimately go back to school, but try something different. I wanted to do something I never tried out, building software. I found Oregon State’s online degree and knew it was the perfect match for me. It came at the right time right when the pandemic started so being locked in the house was a good reason to start online classes. Though the program, I found that I enjoy software development as much as I love the computer hardware side.

Currently, I have really delved into full stack development and starting to get into mobile development. I have become a huge Vue.js junkie and know the documentation like the back of my hand. Honestly, learning how to use Vue.js has accelerated my learning in other subjects. I am hoping to really delve into React and React-native to get more into the world of front-end, but also new ways to enable a solid back-end. I really want to purse a future in full stack going forward.