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Advice for My "Freshman Self"

If I were to go back in time to talk to my freshman self I would first tell him to relax. There were a number of new things that made me nervous upon starting at a college, but none of them truly worth worrying too much about. I would also tell him to maintain his organizational standards and to keep using the journal method. Every semester I keep a calendar/organizational journal to keep track of assignments and test dates. While I could use an application to keep track of these things, I found that handwriting them down simply felt better and more reliable in the long-term. I would also be sure to tell them to practice programming over summer breaks. During my last summer break I took the opportunity to practice programming with an experienced Applied Computing graduate in preparation for joining Professor Feng Wang's research team. I learned a lot in the span of just a month and found myself regretting not practicing my programming skills over previous summer breaks.
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Have my goals changed?

          When I was just starting to take classes at Glendale Community College, I wanted to enter the field of engineering. Specifically, I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, but after spending time with the early engineering classes I found myself enjoying the programming assignments that those classes introduced. From there I changed my degree to Applied Computing and then started at ASU West two semesters later. Early on during my time at ASU, my intentions after graduating were to go into industry work, but after spending a bit more time with my research project this semester I am considering computer science research as an equally viable option. Overall, I would say that these have been some notable goal changes thanks to my experience in the Applied Computing program.
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Dream Job

I would say that my dream job would likely fall under the software development career category. Ideally, I would want a job that allows me to work with a team to create something that serves a notable purpose. Recently, I came into contact with a representative of Amazon who heavily encouraged me to apply for an internship. Following that, I suppose my dream job would be to develop applications for Amazon. Going off of my last blog, I suppose that the reason for why this would be my dream job would be that I simply enjoy creating/developing a product to solve a problem or to make life easier. This has been my goal in general, to find a job that allows me to create products that solve problems.
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STEM

            Why did I choose the STEM field? I suppose that, when I was in high school, I wanted to choose a career path that involved making something to solve an issue. Specifically, finding these solutions through solving a sort of puzzle. At first, I wanted to try engineering as the concept of creating/developing a physical product to solve a solution was appealing. Later on, I found that I enjoyed the programming elements of the projects that I did in high school which led me career-wise to where I am today.  Something interesting about STEM fields is how they often interact with one another. While this may seem like a very obvious point, it is still interesting how these fields commonly interlock to solve prominent issues. For example, a math major can help a programmer design an efficient program to be utilized by an engineering major who is building a device to be used by a chemistry major. For me, it is the idea of making a usable product(prog...
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My SMART Goals

Through careful consideration I have developed a personal goal for developing my programming skills. Specifically, I want to practice my problem solving abilities through programming problems. Websites like codingbat would help greatly in improving such skills. I also hope to develop my own android application within the next few years (possibly before graduation). A concept we learned in class reflects heavily on this concept of making goals for ourselves. The best goals are SMART goals. SMART- S pecific: Is the goal specific, sensible, and/or significant? M easurable: Is it motivating and/or meaningful? A ttainable: Is it achievable and agreeable? R ealistic: Is it reasonable? T ime Bound: Can it be done in a given amount of time? For my goal, its specific in that I explicitly state the method to which I will be improving my programming abilities. Its measurable, in that it is what I want to do to better myself and my career path (motivating). The development of an appli...
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ASU Presentation at SMCC

Tomorrow at 10:00am, I and other ASU Train STEM Scholars will be providing various presentations at South Mountain Community College. I look forward to presenting the fundamentals of what it means to be part of the Applied Computing program at ASU West. See you then!
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The Growth Mindset: My Experience

       I often considered myself to be of a growth mindset, seeing each challenge as an opportunity to improve. Those of us who have a growth mindset hold that any person can learn or become successful in any subject provided they have said mindset. In their book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success , Carol Dweck notes that those who have a growth mindset are not always slated for success, but are not failures when they fail. Those who have this mindset see failure as an opportunity to improve and better themselves in that subject. After reading and discussing this book in class I found that there was a time where I lost sight of this mindset.        Last semester I gradually slipped into a fixed mindset in a philosophy class when I got back my grade for the midterm. I looked at the less than optimal grade and thought that "I will definitely not be getting an A in this class." As the semester went on, I noticed that my grades were doing quite w...
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