The Road
05 Sep 2024
Beginning of the Journey
Growing up, I have always had an interest in video games. I saw life as one big video game that we were all playing in. To me, the world was one big locked map that was unlocked as you traversed the world. School was a place where I could progress my skill tree that would allow me to play the game a certain way. I remember applying for college and trying to figure out what I wanted to major in. This decision was one that was going to be significant as it was going to lock my build into place. I had a bunch of choices going through my mind at the time, “Should I be a doctor and make my mom proud? Or should I do engineering with my friends? But, if I choose engineering, what type of engineer should I be? Maybe I should major in math?” And then one option just stared at me. It was at that point that I decided to major in computer science.
I quickly discovered that I was going to enjoy computer science and software engineering. I learned that I was finding fun in solving difficult problems and really liked to work with large amounts of data. I know for some that it sounds super boring, but I personally enjoy it; I think that it’s relaxing. The more that I progressed through the courses in university I found myself falling more and more in love with software engineering. Eventually, I started to watch software engineering videos on YouTube on a regular basis and my YouTube feed became infested with them. There’s no grand reason or significant experience that caused me to pursue computer science, I just found myself having fun.
Further Down the Road
Moving into the future, I aim to improve my skills with machine learning libraries like sklearn. I was exposed to it in one of my previous classes, but feel that I have just touched the iceberg for machine learning. I find it fascinating that computers are able to take data, analyze it, and produce new data that explains the data that it took in. I also seek to engage in internships and contribute to open-source projects. I know that I lack a lot of hands-on experience with programming. The only experience I have are only the assignments that were done in class, so I’m attempting to foster a deeper understanding of the software engineering practices.
TL;DR
In short, I find software engineering and computer science in general to be fun since I think of it as one big complex problem. I look forward to learning more about machine learning and want to experience real-world applications of what I learned in school.