This past year at the University of Cincinnati has probably been the most busy one yet. I had my second co-op at London Computer Systems as a software developer, I started training for and completed the full Flying Pig Marathon, and I also has my third co-op at Kroger Technology and Digital. I think this year I most exemplified personal growth, as I took on a brand new challenge and continued to further my experience in the computer science space.
Firstly, let's talk about the Flying Pig. This was an event that I spent 8 months training for, running about 4 days per week and amassing a total of 760.48 miles ran. It started in the Fall where I decided that I would have enough time to get in shape before really starting to train for the marathon. So I ran every day before classes and walked on the treadmill during the weekends. Then, once I finally got to the structured training schedule I focused on keeping myself healthy and slowly building up towards longer and longer distances. And in the end, I completed the marathon! Through this training, I learned a lot about how I need to balance training and rest and how too much of each can be bad for you. Along with building up my muscles, I increased my resilience to pain and had the discipline to not slack on my training. So in the future I think I will have an easier time pushing through hard challenges and I can find it easier to keep myself focused on a task.
On the other end of my life, I grew a substantial amount professionally. Both of my co-ops this year involved me working as a full Software Developer and let me gain valuable experience with working in a team of other developers and working in codebases. On top of these developer skills, I also was able to meet a lot of other, more experienced developers that had a lot of valuable information and advice to share with me. I feel very honored to have learned from these people and I hope in the future that I can utilize the things I have learned in co-ops and after graduating.
In conclusion, I feel that I attained a substantial amount of personal growth this year. I reached new heights both personally and professionally. I also met a lot of helpful and kind people who have molded me into a better software developer. Looking forward to next year, I would like to continue to focus on growing professionally and set some new personal goals to achieve (although maybe not as intense as running a marathon again!).
Within the 2022/23 school year, my journey at UC has finally started to blossom. I started my first ever co-op during the Fall of 2022, and began to take more classes aligned with my major during the Spring of 2023. The experiences that I felt had the most impact on me during these two semesters were meeting and learning from people during my first co-op, and gaining a better understanding of literacy in my passions and the world through an interesting English class.
My first co-op, as a Quality Assurance Tester, came with a greater understanding of the software development lifecycle and the people involved in creating software. This being the first job I had that wasn't just working for my dad's company, I learned a lot about what it means to be professional and accomplish tasks I might not have a full grasp of. One of the main sources of this learning was by asking my co-workers and boss lots of questions. Of course there were questions about how to do things and how to use the tools the company had, but there was also the times where I would try to learn about the lives of my co-workers and what this work and the work they had done in the past meant to them. One of the most influential lessons for me was how my boss, Tom, explained his experience in Quality Assurance and why it was so important to software development. Having this job and learning from these people helped expand my mind to the inner workings of my career path, and I feel like it was invaluable information.
For my honors experience this year, I ended up taking an Honors English class. This was the first English class I had taken since senior year of high school, so I was planning to do a lot of catching up. My English classes in the past had focused a lot on reading a specific text, and then forming an essay around something to do with that text. If I found the text boring or I did not find the type of essay we were writing understandable, then I knew I was in for a rough time. The English class I took this year though was a lot more interesting than I could have imagined. Almost every essay involved us doing some sort of our own research, with the final one requiring us to even interview people. Each essay also had a sort of intertwining theme that prevailed over the entire semester, with us first learning about the concept of literacy, then the how different genres interpret information, and finally how they both tie into the concept of discourse communities and the effects it has on writing. I feel like this approach of having the class revolve around a main concept compared to just the classes in high school, which were more concerned with perfecting a style of essay, made it so I was a lot more engaged with the class, and in the end gained more from the experience.
A lot has happened this past year for me as an honors student at my first year at UC. I've made new friends, started preparing for co-ops and generally just learned a lot to be more prepared for the future. However, one specific experience that was very impactful to me this year was the Covid-19 Honors Research Project I completed. Specifically it was learning about the different struggles and hopes for the future that college students like me were having, despite living through a global pandemic, that affected me.Â
There were two main lessons I feel like I took away from my interviews with students. The first is that you need to make the most of the situation you have now. Almost unanimously each student agreed that Covid-19 took away some part of their life that they enjoyed before. Something that might have just come as a given was suddenly not a possibility, and it left a hole in that person's life for a good amount of time. Sure they could try to find alternatives, but it was never quite the same. There were a lot of things in my life that I had taken for granted as well such as how I couldn't go on as many camping outings with Scouts and how I didn't get to spend any time running with friends in Cross Country. Opportunities like the ones I had aren't going to last forever, so it's better to jump on them now while I still have time.
The second lesson was a bit of an unexpected one. One sentiment that was shared by a couple students in the interviews was that Covid-19 and the lockdown actually had some positive effect on them. Mainly, it was that because they were stripped away of all the activities they were once able to do, it left more time for introspection and to think about the future. One student thought a lot about their career and another was able to grow closer to a smaller group of friends. The seclusion, while not ideal, had some benefits for these students. I feel that in the future I can learn from this by trying to spend less time filling in every gap in my schedule. Sometimes it can be good to just take time to think about your life, think about your future, think about who is affecting you and think about what you want to do to grow. By spending more time thinking ahead about my life, I can get a better sense of where I want to go in life and how I can accomplish it.
Now, I admit that these two lessons seem to be at a bit of odds. However, it is the balance of the two that makes them work. You need to take advantage of the opportunities you have in the present, but you also can't overdo it. Doing too much can cause a lot of stress and unneeded worries. It's important to spend time thinking about the future, but you can't do that forever. These two lessons are what I am going to use to form my goals for this next academic year. Specifically I want to participate in more opportunities around campus to help me learn in my career field, such as attending seminars or interesting clubs. I also just want to spend time researching the opportunities I have online for certificates to further my career, as well as the opportunities at UC that will progress my academic path. I feel that with these goals in mind, I will be more prepared for my future career and have a better understanding of where and what exactly I want to do.