Since I was a kid, I’ve always been a little bit of a tech nerd. My knowledge was very limited of course, but I was always the kid to go to whenever any of my classmates had a simple computer problem. Despite this, I’ve never actually taken any programming or computer related classes in high school, and I was unsure of what I wanted to do as a career. My interest in majoring in computer engineering piqued after I graduated high school, when I spontaneously decided to learn python on my own. I was drawn in by the complexity and endless possibilities of things that are possible to create with the knowledge of programming, and I was fascinated by how the applications we use on a daily basis are built by words and numbers on a screen, and on an even lower level, by 1s and 0s. As of this moment, I am now in my fourth year of university with about a year left until graduation, and I am glad I took this route for my career.
One of the things I enjoy and am interested in is incorporating software engineering with physical hardware to create fully functioning, tangible products. This is also known as embedded systems. Some examples of this could be a game with a display involving several push buttons, a surveillance system that uses facial and/or voice recognition, or an automatic light controller. Because I am a computer engineering major, I have taken many classes related to electrical engineering and have the knowledge to create simple embedded systems. I am also interested in video game development, as I am a bit of a nerd and spend a good chunk of my time playing video games of all varieties. I think being a part of a game development team would be very fulfilling because I would be able to put passion into my work, which is one of my main long term career goals.
In this class and the rest of my college journey, I aim to polish my coding skills, create innovative projects with a layer of complexity, and obtain internships to gain real-world experience. To polish my coding skills, I will continue to practice leetcode problems to supplement the learning from my classes. Doing these leetcode problems are especially useful for doing well in technical interviews, which I will inevitably have to do in the future. I will also attempt to obtain an internship in the near future, as that will help prepare me for full-time positions as well as help in the job searching process. I am currently in my fourth year and have yet to participate in an internship, so that is one of my main priorities.