January 28, 2025

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 professional. With technology being intertwined in our everyday lives, it is important to exercise extra caution to the harm we could cause to others. This will require a understanding to different social classes, genders, and races, to say the least. Since CS typically involves the collection of data for some purpose, it is also important to remember that people's trust lies in our hands. With that great power, we should work diligently in handling that information responsibly and honestly.

Part 3

    As a CS major, there are some important information I should understand and work on becoming proficient in. One of the most important one is learning how to technically communicate. It is the ability to relay technical information to others that may not be as knowledgeable in the field. This will have the benefit of helping others to understand my issues, needs, and providing updates. It was also be beneficial to get comfortable with command-line computing or an IDE-less software development. I find this especially true with my job, where accessing various components of the system or performing software loading, is done through command-lines. Another important area to study is algorithms. I had very little experience with this area, working on different sorting and searching algorithms, so I am looking forward to the Algorithms course coming up.

Part 4

Integrity is important for me and other students in the program first and foremost because it makes it a fair playing field. I have been in situations where all of us completed the final project fairly, working together to resolve any compilation issues. However, one particular student found the complete program somewhere and used it as her own. The final grade was curbed to the highest one, which was hers, which still resulted in a rather unfair grading scale. But on a personal level, integrity is important because it is what sets the ground for whether you are treating yourself, or cheating yourself. Sure, doing an assignment might take a lot of time and be more challenging than I would like, but through that struggle, I am able to gain a better understanding. It also forces me to find alternative views, which often helps me identify patterns that helps reinforce what I have learned. Cheating academically may help someone graduate with decent grades, but it won't help them when it is time to participate in coding interviews or their jobs. Finally, integrity is important because if caught, it will result in disciplinary actions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

04 February 2025

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...
Read more

Week 7

  Homework One assignment was the Markov Prompt. It read a text file and generated a collection of words and those that followed it to generate a new text. Sometimes the new sentences made sense and sometimes, they were just strange. It is funny to think about how I thought it was such a difficult assignment, but looking back, it was the only one I managed to get all the tests to pass on. I think I had the best approach with it so far, reading the prompt for understanding, then going through it once more to set up skeleton methods, prior to writing the code. How I would approach it differently is to sit down and think about my approach a little more. The prompt seemed so thorough and like it covered everything, that I just went for it. However, when it was time, I got stuck on areas like addWord and getSentence for DAYS because algorithms matter. I would also better organize myself with each method by creating a chart, because as I worked on some of them, I realized it made calls t...
Read more

January 21, 2025

Image
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...
Read more