Pursuit of Further Understanding
17 Jan 2018
History
I graduated from the University of Minnesota - Duluth in 2012 with a major in MIS and still didn’t really know what I wanted to do for my career. I had a few jobs but somehow the idea of programming applications that manipulated data caught my attention when I was at my first job as a database developer. I didn’t have have much experience with database programming besides using SQL to run basic queries to pull specific data so I was tasked with a Microsoft Access Database. What I found about the application was that it seemed too hand-held in creating an application for the user for , so I started researching on how to put my own code into access via visual basic. After a few lines of code I had a some functionalities that I was looking for. From that point I then moved on to coding web applications. After about a year or so I then started to hit a point where even though I could put down a certain line of code and it spat out what I wanted, I really didn’t know what the underlying ideas of why or how some of these things did what they did. It felt as if I went to fast into coding without having a strong base of understanding. Thus began my journey to go back to school in pursuit of a Masters in Computer Science.
Current Progress
Since then, I’m now currently in ICS 314 Software Engineering 1 at the University of Hawaii - Manoa. I’ve definitely learned a lot since when I started with things such as the ADTs and algorithms and its been pretty challenging. Even though some courses have been a challenge I look at it as “if it was easy I probably just wasted my tuition money”. I still got just a few more classes before being eligible for the Master’s program so I’m just taking it one class at a time trying to learn and apply any new information provided to me.
Advice
For anyone who decides to take the same path I did or might even be just getting their Bachelor’s in Computer Science, I would say to make sure you truly have a passion for the field because that passion would mesh well with your learning. If you’re not coding anything at home other than class projects I would imagine that you would have a difficult time through the major. Continuous coding and your own research truly does help in some of these classes. There are things that your classes might not teach you but you could still apply to your projects and homework. I’ve found that I had the best grades for courses I enrolled in where I genuinely had an interest in. Also try not to only look at your courses as a path to your graduation but instead tools to better equip you to be more skilled and more valuable.