Hi Readers!
First and foremost! I wanted to start a new blog series called “Level Up”. This is where I talk about things that I believe can help me improve as a software engineer hence Level Up! To kick off the series I want to give a life update that I will finally be starting my Master’s program for Computer Science where my primary focus will be Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. It’s been about 3 years since I’ve had any formal education and last time it took me 6 years to complete! Or somewhere around there. For some background on why it took such a long time to complete my Bachelor’s Degree is because during High School… I didn’t care much for education, I wasn’t the “model” student I was quite the opposite that I barely graduated with a 1.2 GPA. I ended up going to a community college called Mt. San Antonio College because my mom kept pushing me to go to school and to be honest, I almost dropped out and used my knee issues at the time as an excuse to not go to school. In addition to that, because of how poorly I did in high school… I was retaking classes from 9th grade High School such as pre-algebra and some sort of remedial English where we had to go back to the basics of forming sentences. However, I ended up retaking an Introduction to Philosophy class since I failed it the first time due to not showing up and was truly inspired by the professor and it gave me an awakening in life and how COOL it actually is to be an educated individual. Without boring you with the contents, things such as the Socratic Method, The Trolly Problem, and Plato’s Cave pushed my mind.
“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.” – Socrates
Anyways, because of this, I ended up taking 18 units EVERY semester at community college and never taking my summer or winter breaks just so that I can catch up to my peers. When I took my first Introduction to Computer Science class my classmates who I still talk to this day were in Calculus 1 or 2 whereas I was in Geometry (about 5 math classes behind.. geometry > trigonometry > pre-calculus > calculus 1 > calculus 2). The funny thing is, I was able to catch up and in my final year at Mt. San Antonio College, we ended up all taking the same classes which were Calculus 3 and Linear Algebra & Differential Equations. Then some of us ended up going to the University of California, Irvine where I kind of focused on having more of a social life than grinding the long hours in school because my mentality was that “I finally made it, I can relax now” since all I had to do was pass my classes to graduate. Once I graduated from UC Irvine, the rest was history.
So why do I want to go back to school?
There are multiple answers… To become more educated, more job opportunities by being a more competitive candidate, having some accountability, “always have to do something to better myself” mentality?
What area of focus did you choose and why?
I chose my area of focus to be Artificial Intelligence. During my undergraduate, I always thought that AI was just a fad… I took an introduction to AI class and just found it boring but that might be because the professor showed a lack of enthusiasm on the topic. But one of the project assignments was to build an AI to beat the game Wumpus World which I thought was cool (lots of conditionals).
However, with the explosion of chatGPT, all the applications that came out of that, and the new opportunities that followed… I feel that it kind of makes sense to do that versus focusing on web development which I feel is VERY saturated with engineers with all sorts of backgrounds. In addition to that, while working at my current job (Housecall Pro) I’ve taken quite a liking to “data”. Such as the value that they bring to the business and being able to predict the outcomes based on what we currently know (modeling?).
What are some things you will do differently?
I think the biggest thing that I will do differently is not to be so hung up on school. During my undergraduate, especially in community college, I gave up my social life, was burnt out with always taking 18 units every semester and never took winter or summer break. It made me a one-dimensional person where all I knew to do was school and if I didn’t have that then I had nothing.
This time around I think I’m going to just have a chill-back attitude and focus more on the important things.
Anyways, thank you for reading! This is a bit personal for me but hey… what the heck it felt kind of good writing this. I’m looking forward to this upcoming Fall and to start my journey!