Monica's CS Journey

Interview with Bill McDermott The expert I decided to interview within the industry is Bill McDermott, the Technical Director of Test Operations at General Atomics. Bill is responsible for the research and development of the technology used and also manages special projects. He used to be the supervisor for my current mentor in the company, Roy Lara. It is through Roy that I became acquainted with Bill (I have a different supervisor). Now Bill is managing the Collaborative Combat Aircrafts (CCA) project for a contract we recently secured with the Air Force. I chose Bill as the expert I wanted to research because he is not only very knowledgeable, but the impression he leaves on me is different compared to other higher-ups in the company. Unlike other supervisors, Bill is rarely found in his office, but rather working hands-on tasks on the floor, whether it be routing fiber or connecting the different systems that compose a Ground Control Station (GCS). Bill is also personally writing...

Part 1      The study tip I chose to read, based on my weakness, was "Concentration Tips" . I often find myself reading and realizing that I did not comprehend anything. This results in me losing time because then I have to take the time go back and read the material again. Something I took away from this reading that is good advice is to help prevent daydreaming by stopping to ask myself questions about the material.  Part 2      From the Team Project where we had to survey the CS curriculum, I learned a lot about the classes that I am about to be taking throughout this program. Prior to this, I was not too sure of some of the classes but this gave me the chance to figure it out and understand how it will be useful in becoming more proficient in this field.      This week also focused on the subject of ethics, which the ability to decide what is right and wrong. This is will be an especially important consideration as a computing profes...

Review and Reflect: Based on the Effective Study Skills paper, three areas that I am strong in are: scheduling my study times, surveying what I am going to be studying, and reciting. I start out every week reviewing all the assignments so I can decide what will require more of my time. I set aside 1.5 hours after work to go to the gym and shower then understand I will get straight to studying afterwards. I tend to talk to myself a lot for anything, even reading a word I never seen before. I will say it out loud to make sure I understand it. Three areas that I think I can improve on is: reading, reviewing, and true-false questions. I find myself constantly getting in a cycle of reading and not really comprehending what I just read, so I have to reread the material. As I am usually in a rush, I don't review enough if I feel like I got it. My test scores sometimes beg to differ. But this also correlates with the fact that I tend to overthink small details in true-false questions, ofte...

     This week started a little slow by taking the time to get to meet other fellow students, in addition into fostering a more cohesive team through collaboration. Our team met once a week prior to the beginning of the semester to discuss our team resume and prepare for the following team-assignments. We also met again to watch a video assignment and discussed some key points. We then talked about how we could best revise our resume and the final product can be accessed here:  Code Busters - Resume      A portion of the readings were from OLI (Open Learning Initiative), which begins to discuss the importance of team work and how training can help better cohesiveness between team members. It begins with a video of a team having a meeting then asks me to identify all the things that went wrong during that meeting.      This week also focuses on the requirements to creating a strong research paper, in preparation for our Industry Research ...