My academic journey didn’t start with computer science. During my adolescence, I never would have thought that I would ever go into STEM. It felt so out of reach, something that I could never accomplish. Partly because I didn’t have many resources, partly because of self doubt. I started college with my major undecided. This gave me time to explore my options and discover my passions. These were the most pivotal months in my college career. I felt so lost and so behind compared to my peers. Everyone around me seemed to have at least one thing they were passionate about, while I had nothing that I enjoyed enough to start a career in. Like many people in my generation, I looked to social media for answers. The first thing I did was, of course, search for the highest paid degrees. Obviously, that is how I found computer science. It didn’t appeal to me at first because I wasn’t looking to study STEM at the time and I consider myself creative. I didn’t believe that computer science allowed creativity. But as I did more research and listened to people’s experiences studying computer science, I was delighted to come across software engineering. I took my first computer science course in the summer before my sophomore year and I enjoyed it more than I expected. While frustrating at times, it felt so rewarding to see my codes working the way it was supposed to in the end. This class taught me how to problem solve and to pay attention to detail, because even the smallest errors can cause major problems.
I like the creative aspect of software engineering. Using imagination and problem solving to turn an idea into reality, especially when it’s something that other people can see and use. This is what draws me more toward front-end development and UI/UX Design. I also have high hopes that software engineering will allow me to further explore different sections in computer science.
As I move forward in computer science, I hope to gain more proficiency in the programming languages that I am familiar with, like Java, JavaScript, and Python. I am also excited to learn more languages, like C and C++, which I am doing this semester. Software engineering also requires the ability to work in teams. This is a skill that I am looking forward to developing further. As a quiet kid growing up, I look forward to improving my communication skills while working in teams.