My Goals for Winter 2017

9:05 PM


Hello again! I want to begin a series of posts where, at the beginning of each academic quarter, I set new goals for myself, and assess my progress on previous ones. Because this is the first installment, and my first quarter as an OSU student, I'm going to set 3 broad goals.


My 3 goals:

  • Develop good coding habits
    • I chose to go the post-baccalaureate route as opposed to a bootcamp to build a strong foundation. I want part of that foundation to be good habits!
  • Improve my time management
    • I've survived 2 jobs and 5 classes before, but there's alaways room for improvement.
  • Make new friends
    • This might be difficult in an online program, but I've never said no to a challenge

Introduction

9:53 PM



Hello world! As a first post here, I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself and provide some information on my professional and academic background, and a bit about my intentions for this blog. New year, new things!



I created this blog to track my progress through school, and to discuss my projects, and any other relevant thoughts and topics. Some will be focused on things that are specific to my school and program, while others will be much more broad and general. This is my first quarter attending Oregon State University as a Computer Science major, so I suppose now is a good time to begin documenting my experiences here! I’m a student in the Online CS Post-Baccalaureate program, so I don’t live in Oregon, and I already have one Bachelor’s degree.
I graduated from San Jose State University (with departmental Honors, I suffered for that title!) in May 2016 with a degree in Business Administration, concentrating in Management Information Systems. I was very involved during my time at SJSU. I was a student in the Honors program, a member of the MIS Association, and was selected twice to represent my school at the Women in Cyber Security conference. In addition, I spent a semester as a TA, doing regular TA work, as well as assisting the department chair in editing Salesforce application-building labs, and helping faculty members run them in their classes, and tutoring the students who were completing them. I was exposed to coding, networking, and database administration in the few technical classes that were part of my MIS curriculum, which is when I discovered my aptitude for technology.
I interned at a large healthcare organization for a year and a half, where I learned to code. I worked on several projects while I was there, including a tool that consulted internal customers through the process of pricing out infrastructure equipment. My experience as a business major came in handy for financial calculations! I enjoyed the challenge of being thrown into a project with little experience. I showed myself that I can learn anything quickly if I really try. The time I spent there was extremely valuable to my career development, and really solidified my desire to continue learning to code, and to go into a post-baccalaureate program.