Designing a Better World
18 Jan 2024
Up until now, I’ve always struggled to find a passion for anything particular. Whenever I explore I often end up falling into the same sentiment of “as long as I end up making the world a better place then no matter what I do I’ll be alright.” As flippant as that sounds it is the value I hold closest to me when thinking about the future. But “making the world a better place” isn’t really a SMART goal. It’s not specific, it’s hard to measure, too objective to be considered achievable, relevant yes, but not at all time-bound. It is a value that I hold close, but as someone who now has to face entering the workforce I have to ask myself, how do I quantify making the world a better place? I found my answer in the intersection between STEM and humanities – that’s what computer science is to me, a field where I can use technology and branch into any interdisciplinary field and quantitate the changes I make in the world. </div>
Building a Skills Palette
Sometimes I feel like I’m playing a never-ending game of catch-up because there is an infinite amount of skills to learn, and my skills palette is small. I have a bit of experience in Java, C, C++, and R, and through ICS 314 I’m excited to add JavaScript, but I haven’t built anything that has been published or made public for people to use. As I learn more about software development I hope I begin building my skills in front-end and back-end development. On the front-end, I look forward to crafting engaging and user-friendly interfaces. On the back-end, I hope to develop robust server-side applications and databases. Eventually I’d like to utilize the combination of the two in order to create applications that are accessible, functional, and useful.
Future Computer Composition
Despite this being my second year in the Information & Computer Science major, I haven’t taken the skills I’ve learned beyond the classroom. That’s my biggest goal for this year – to start creating something. One of the main reasons I was looking forward to taking ICS 314 this semester was because I wanted to learn how to create an application, and I’m starting to feel a little bit more confident my growing abilities. The WODs in class help remind me that sometimes I know more than I thought, and I leave feeling a little closer to capable of building an app. I look forward to doing more WODs as these experience will enhance my programming skills and help me gain practical experience for more opportunities in the future. At the end of this all, I hope I come out as a competent software developer.
*Note: This essay has been crafted with the help of ChatGPT for grammar*