Professional Autobiography

As a freshmen in Stony Brook University, I enrolled as a chemical engineer because I like chemistry and math in high school. It’s a major I thought that I will enjoy since my father was a successful engineer. But after I declared that I didn’t like a required physics course, my friend convinced me to switch to computer science. Since I like computers, I decided to give computer science a try. I always thought that computer science was just programming, but I was mistaken with the wide breadth of topics that I taken that semester. I discovered that computer science is a more diverse discipline than anything I knew about in high school. It includes networking, math, critical thinking, designing, research, programming, and so much more. I was excited to explore all the disciplines that computer science has to offer for a potential career path because I knew that I enjoy math but did not like writing algorithms and formulas. Based on all of the classes I have taken so far in college, I learned that it’s all right if I’m not stellar at programming. It’s not that I’m bad at programming, but it’s something that I don’t think I will enjoy as a career choice. I decided that I wanted to focus on being a software designer, another important area of the industry.

Technology is a booming market in the industry. People today will always look at the coolest new gadget, and there is a lot of attention to coding. Games like Legend of Legends and World of Warcraft have earned a lot of money, Apple releases a new phone every year with a lot of people streaming in, and there is research to advancing artificial intelligence. Other businesses depend on technology to operate. Engineers need computer software to do calculations and design. A lot of banks employed programmers to develop safe, secure databases to protect money and to grow their business. I recently went to a talk panel that was hosted by a bank named Goldback Sachs in which they claimed that 25% of their company is dedicated to technology. They advocated the importance of intelligent programmers and how the work you do with them will never be scrapped. Technology today is not like how it was last decade. I wanted to be a part of this new and exciting field of exploration in any way possible.

Even what all the praise I said, there is still a lot of problems that comes with this expansion of technology. Hacking is a concern that was never a big newsline when I was a child. With so many people depending on technology, they are victims to digital security, which interested my being. That is why I decided to be a software designer: so I that I could give better service to the products I want to work on. Software engineers do code amazing things, but they won’t know how to fit all their code together. Programs are not coded on one giant file with over thousands of lines of code; they are coded separately into smaller modules that each provide a purpose and must fit together to achieve a desired end result. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. I enjoy doing this during one of my computer science courses and figured that it fits me much better than being an actual programmer. Having a good optimal design is important because not having a secure design will result in delays, nasty bugs, and introduce security faults that hackers may find. I was really concerned when I learned that the Yahoo database was hacked and that my emails and passwords could be compromised. WIth all the paranoid about security and privacy, I wanted to learn more about how to keep things secure. Thus, this was my motivation to being a software designer.

As a junior and senior in college, I decided to join the Stony Brook Computing Society club. There, the group traveled to several hackathons and even the headquarters of FaceBook! During these events, employees from a lot of software companies lectured about the inner workings and the means of success in the tech industry. I was impressed at how much the employees are so much like me when I was in college, and that knowledge motivated me further. I think this experience will help me look for jobs as these experiences fills me with a lot of knowledge about their world.

After graduation, I know that I won’t be a software designer right away, so that’s why I took a lot of design courses at Stony Brook to prepare for it. To be a software designer, you usually need to be able to code well and that requires more experience than I currently have. I decided to work at my father’s place in the MTA as an IT worker to gain proper experience and work closely with other software people. I love computers, so I know that my passion and knowledge in coding and design will help me succeed at any junior position. It is a position that I envision I will end up enjoying and that I hope that I can achieve after I graduate.

Since a computer science major means you should also be good at math and coding, I think being skilled in writing will further help my employers. Writing is a dwindling skill that most programmers with a computer science degree will undervalue when they graduate. Writing documentation of coded projects is an important skill that everyone usually dismisses, which is understandable because that’s not what they are paid to do. Since employers in software companies know that writing is an unfavored form of communication, they do a lot of company meetings to communicate. I think that if I have proof of my writing education, I will benefit my company.

My dreams for my future has changed a lot over the years. I think that I want to be in a position of leadership. I learn that I have natural leadership ability at my job as a social media manager one summer, but I’m usually too shy as a new person on a team to speak out loud. At the job, I did the budget and planned events that my organization will do. Being a software designer requires mentorship that only senior designers can provide and not a degree. I know that these long-term goals will change because a lot of things can change in twenty or thirty years. As an example, the smartphone industry has only been around for ten or so years, but it’s one of the largest industries in the world right now. I could be an expert in an industry that might not yet exist. But I know that even if I change, I will put my skills to best use and adjust my aspirations for my career and future.