Hello world!
This is my first blog ever, so let’s get started. It’s Springtime and I finally made it to my final term at OSU for my CS degree. This journey took longer than I thought. I was planning to power through the post-baccalaureate program in 2.5 years but ended up taking almost 4 years to finish this degree. I’m so glad that I wasn’t in any rush to complete this program and I was able to work, learn, explore, and adopt a new timeline along the way. I’m grateful to be able to go back to school and learn something out of inspiration and curiosity about using technology to do good. There have been a lot of disruptions and unknowns throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Being in school and keeping my full-time job helped me stay grounded. With my established routine, I found myself more productive and creative. I think I’ll miss being a student, and I find myself wondering whether I should seek another degree.
This blog intends to share my journey for the OSU Online Capstone Project (CS 467). So let me focus a bit here. This is week 1, assignments include taking a syllabus quiz, posting an optional introduction on the Canvas Discussions, choosing a project for the term, blog post 1 (here), and making a Team introduction. The syllabus quiz was straightforward, and it took me a minute to answer the questions. I made my optional introduction, and most of my classmates did so as well. Most of my classmates sound excited about graduating soon and there are quite a few postings including their new job positions secured. It was encouraging to read through the diverse positions in tech. A quick search on google returned 776,615 tech jobs (NEW AS OF March 27, 2022) on Indeed.com. Although I’m not in any rush to land a tech job since I decided to stay in my current job a bit longer, I feel a bit unsettled about the next chapter of my career. I hope to blend technology into my experience in health care, health education, global health, and nonprofits.
For choosing a project for the term, we had to fill out a survey and mark 5 projects of interest from the EECS project portal. The “Citizen Science App for Kids” was my first choice because it most matches my aspiration to build an engaging platform to support education. For my second project choice, I selected the “Crowd-sourced Fitness Challenge App” for my positive experience in using fitness and wellness apps throughout the pandemic to keep myself healthy. I enjoy designing and coding apps for learning purposes, so the “Crowd-sourced Immersive Language Learning App” would be a fun project. I have been meaning to learn game dev for a year now, so this capstone could ignite my game dev journey. However, I need to focus on becoming a better app and web developer. I’ve planned to launch a cross-platform health education mobile app and revamp a nonprofit’s website by the end of 2022. So it would be smarter for me to work on a capstone project that help me improve my app and/or web dev skills. The EECS projects, “Create a web or mobile version of a Climate Change Board Game” and the project “Software Programming Quiz” look like a good fit, so I picked those as my options 4 and 5. On the project survey, we have the option to form a team with two other classmates. I ended up selecting not having teammate preferences. Now it’s wait time if I get my top project choice and to meet my new teammates.
Until next time,
M:Z
“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” Unknown.
