Journey into My Journey

Hello fellow human,

That’s definitely a weird way to start a blog, but I’m running out of greetings. We’ve arrived at the end of this series. Thank you for following along. For this last post, I wanted to go over my thoughts about CS467 and my future career. So, let’s journey into my journey.

As I mentioned before, CS467 is a capstone course for the online postbaccalaureate computer science program at Oregon State University. I’m in the final few weeks and I wanted to reflect on this course. The structure of CS467 was that you worked on an approved project with two to three other students for the duration of this class. Along the way, you would have to do weekly blog submissions, weekly stand up discussions, a midpoint submission, a poster, and a final submission.

Looking back, I think I really enjoyed this course. I had two fantastic team members and we worked well with each other. At the end of this, we will have developed a time management system where employees can use QR codes to clock in and out. I got to learn how to set up a database on Heroku. I learned how to set up the tables in that database and how to create a backend with a controller and model format. After that, I was able to connect our backend to our front end using CORS and axios. Lastly, I learned Vue.js and created a few pages that displayed data from our database.

However, all of this wasn’t taught to me. I had to go out and learn it for myself. I think that journey of self-learning is what I enjoyed the most. I was able to learn these different technologies and apply them. There were a lot of problems along the way, but that’s part of the process. I’m thankful for this experience as I got to work on an interesting project with a great team. Not to mention, I learned that I actually enjoy working with the backend.

This is also my last semester at Oregon State University. If all goes well, I will have my bachelor degree in computer science by July. By that, I mean I hope I pass CS325 (algorithms). That means I’m going to be applying for a full-time job soon. I’ve heard a lot about this process and that getting the first job is always difficult. I have to admit that I do have some anxiety about this as I’m finally here… After 2 years of hard effort, I get to try a new career. I’m excited, but I’m wondering if I did enough. As I had to work full-time for most of the program, I wasn’t able to do an internship. For better odds, that means I got to have a solid resume, a GitHub portfolio with some cool projects, and experience with LeetCode.

After graduating, my plan is to develop my resume by looking at successful examples, add two more projects to my portfolio, and to have a strict regiment of LeetCode practice. However, I’m not too worried. I’ve always considered this program as an investment in me. I do have some faith in my abilities and I can’t wait to land my first software developer job.

Thank you for reading,
Manbir