About Me
From an early age, I was always fascinated by computers and electronics. I used to take apart my new electronic toys just to see how they worked and now I am on my way to a bachelor's degree in Computer Science as well as Electrical and Computer Engineering. I am actually in the middle of a career change as I have been in carpentry my entire life and just recently realized I wanted a job that wasn't so hard on my body. I've been hanging sheetrock (5/8" the heavy stuff) and framing partition walls (interior non-load bearing) for over twenty years. My construction career started in the great state of Alaska where I graduated from the Southern Alaska Carpenters Training Center (trade school) in 2008.
I lived in Alaska from the age of 10 to the age of 37 and just recently moved to Oregon looking for work. Things were great, work was plenty until Covid-19 hit and everything shut down. I saw an opportunity to take advantage of the FAFSA and get a degree so I started my 4-year degree in computer science last fall. As a young child, I was told I would never be able to go to college because it was too expensive. Turns out that is not true and now I have a full scholarship for my degree through FAFSA and the State of Oregon with the help of Vocational Rehabilitation, I am on my way to complete career change.
My hobbies include all the outdoor things like you would expect from an Alaskan, fishing, hunting, hiking, kayaking, and just about anything outdoors; I grew up in the great outdoors. I also enjoy works from great science fiction and fantasy authors, building computers (I like fast machines), computer software, cryptocurrency mining, and just about anything else a closet nerd could love. Growing up in the construction industry really doesn't allow for people with interests like mine so I've had to suppress my passion.
My passion is computer science and engineering and I have a chance to pursue a degree in what I love has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. My entire life I thought that getting into college and getting a degree for people who had more than I did and had no idea about grants. I had heard about scholarships but never believed I could get one. I can't complain as the construction industry has treated my finances well but the toll on my body has been extreme. This is why I want to get through my bachelor's degree and move on to graduate school with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and quantum computing trying to get ready for the quantum revolution about to happen.
Achievements
Member of the Honors Program at Lane Community College
Member of Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society
Member of the TRiO STEM organization
I graduated top of my class at the SACTC (Southern Alaska Carpenters Trade Center)
Hard-working Journeyman Carpenter since 2008
Father of two intelligent teenage girls
Strengths
My intelligence
I put in the extra effort and don't take no for an answer
I possess a very valuable virtue called integrity
I know how to work long and hard through all kinds of environments
Self disciplined persona
Ability to look outside the box and even outside the building
My charismatic attitude
Goals
My current goals are academic in nature and include the rest of this semester and then another year at Lane Community College. Then I head north to Corvallis transferring to Oregon State University to complete a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and then continue onto graduate school. My goals from there are to learn as much as I can about quantum computing with an emphasis on quantum physics so I can start a hardware and software firm creating quantum software and computers in preparation for the next computational revolution.
Academics
WR 227: Technical Writing
Instructor: Dr. Ce Rosenow
The skills I have learned from this assignment make me confident I can now go out and use them toward my academic as well as professional goals. Thinking critically was one outcome I learned to use discerning what information to use for my assignment. I was able to find reliable information I could trust that supported my subject in a way that was useful. This was a tough assignment but it taught me a lot about the learning outcomes and why they are important. I am a computer science major and all of my writing will have some sort of technical aspect through my education and career. This assignment made me confident in my ability to gather information from reliable sources that support and identify what I was trying to explain.
This assignment helps contribute to both my academic and professional goals by making an easy calling card with my information explaining in detail who I am and what my credentials are making it easy for scholarship providers, potential employers, and anyone. This will relate to any writing course I may take in the future using ALA formatting. All of my writing in my future will be incredibly technical and professional and communication is key. I can communicate with others effectively and come to a positive outcome.
This assignment took a lot of research and required creating entries from twelve different sources of various types from websites to ebooks. I had to use critical thinking to choose credible sources for my Formal Analytical Report and I chose to analyze two different IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and choose which one was better based on my information. It was a little more difficult to find material on CLion but being it has to do with computer science there were lots of sources of material from credible sources. I found a lot of opinions on which IDE was better but none of them really held any weight making it a process to find out who each author was and what their credentials were. It was a process and I learned a lot about finding credible sources.
I learned a lot about what kind of information and how it is presented from different sources such as blogs, books, and websites. I learned that I can use the sources of the sources I find and search for their work to find a lot of useful material. Now I know where to go and how to find exactly what I need. I learned how to use the LCC Library and Google Scholar to pinpoint the articles I need with just a few keywords. Future writing classes will require annotated bibliographies and I feel I can provide a quality product. I learned the importance of your sources, who they are, and how they can help me explain my point.
The report is on the ease and use of CLion (IDE) and Microsoft Visual Studio and which one is better for computer science students of Lane Community College. I've researched a lot of material on both and I have been using CLion for the past three semesters but I'm leaning towards Visual Studio. According to my professor, it all depends on your employer and what they are using but everyone has a preference. I used sources from blogs, the product web page, professional coding software review websites, and books on the products themselves. I had to create the entire idea and find credible evidence to back it up.
My future working in the computer industry will require analytical reports with progress reports and definitions. I can create, formalize, and provide these reports for school too. This was a very involved and time-consuming project with research and development taking up the bulk of the timeline. I am doing all of this without a synchronise class without any physical help save the wonderful Zoom tutors and the librarian, they taught me how to reach out for help.