Alumni Panel

Questions and answers from CS alumni panel.

Questions

Q: How did you realize whant you wanted to do as your major?

A:

  • Colein: Realized that one can code pretty well, other friends and family members suggested to learn compsci. Comp-sci is a competitive field that’s about perspective.
  • Anthony: Did programing from a young age, found it interesting and kept doing it.
  • Andrew: Took Intro to CS and really liked it and liked the techy and teamwork aspect of cs.
  • Maybel: Didn’t really like the cs class or subject, new that it was important to learn. Interned with northrop with their respective tasks. You are still going have to learn scripting and programming even if transitiong into another field.
  • Allison: Cognitive sciences really helped with the UI/UX field of CS, especially in the front-end dev part.
  • Nitya: Made own games and programs in free time and during summer. Took CSP and saw how she could apply cs to real world projects.

Q: What were some challenges in comp sci

A:

  • Colein: Starting out sucks a lot, error messages and stuff made things annoying and hard to approach. Stuff on the internet will help you
  • Anthony: Clashing Egos, working together is hard because CS majors have a big ego, very frustrating. Follow your own curve and focus on your path.
  • Andrew: The theory of CS is hard and the curriculumn in college is not structured and introduced new topics that people didn’t really focus on. Different from high school computer science courses.
  • Maybel: Hard to find the motivation to CS, there is always someone better than you at CS. The robotics team had a lot of people that were good at CS, never had the motivation to work or study cs. Got really frustrated with the syntax of the problem. Realized that google was the best friend for syntax.
  • Allison: Hard time starting out with CS. The temptation to BS one’s work. Temptation to cut corners, must have a mindset to go above and beyond in order to truly succeed at CS.
  • Nitya: Getting started in a new area of computer science is ver yahrd and it’s daunting to try and get used to how you get started on coding. Got confused on where to start coding.

Q: Are there any PBL scenarios in College

A:

  • Colein: Not that many project based learning scenarios in college, probably only 1. However, even if schools are theory based, projects are bound to show up in college.
  • Anthony: CS courses are bound to have projects.
  • Andrew: PBL is argely embedded with computer science, there are a lot of tests based on theory though.
  • Maybel: College in the first few years is just common education, the teacher does not have the time to answer all questions and not everyone can get 1 on 1 sessions. People struggle with this so hey used PBL to create study groups with one another. Some project classes are based on a lot of proejcts such as machine learning or artificial intellegence classes. Some people are going to freeload, but that’s okay, it’s an opportunity to learn. Always ask questions whie interning.
  • Allison: -
  • Nitya: -

Q: How have you applied CS in your major if you are not majoring in CS?

  • Colein: A lot of menial tasks such as spreadsheet organizing and copy pasting could be sped up by a script. Coding is everywhere, mechanical students will use MATLAB and a lot of the computer science topics to help them with the work
  • Anthony: -
  • Andrew: Computer science can help in other fields that require mathematics, it can run many operations really fast.
  • Maybel: A lot of softwares may require certain stress tests. 3D printing could be simplified with CS and other algorithms.Makes stuff a lot faster in order to reduce manual labor. CS extends far beyond the CS major. A lot of people use jupyter notebooks for techincal papers for interactivity and such. Really nice for a research paper.
  • Allison: Psychology + computer science for Cog-sci. A lot of front-end programming with UI/UX. A lot of courses for stats also require a lot of calculations, programming certain programs could help with many tasks. It is inevitable. Psychology classes also have CS.
  • Nitya: -

Q: For existing college students, have you had a job at your school?

  • Colein: Really important to create a resume for job applications. Push yourself to be above and beyond in order to be different from the other students. Visit office hours regularly. Reference yourself to the professor to think about how you are different rom the others. Becoming a TA is alsovery valuable and important. Sometimes you just have to figure it out! Visualized fight data, databases, web development, python automation, cyber security, etc.
  • Anthony: Code ninjas, franchise.
  • Andrew: Tutor at the college. Worked with a lot of tools such as APIs, web dev, javascript, html, and python.
  • Maybel: Robotics prfessor is a part time professor at UCSD that trains autonomous vehicals. Some professors have clubs and some have research clubs. As the professor if there’s any slots open in their labs and just pass them your resume. Interned at Northrop with Colein. Creating websites for flight data.
  • Allison: Had an internship with a church group, frontend UI dev.
  • Nitya: Northrop Grumman high school internship program. https://ngc.avature.net/events/Register?folderld=%2012369 <—— note to self

Q: Did you ever focus on personal projects along with school

  • Colein: In mechanical engineering, used computer science to mirror components to create mechanical parts. A lot of manipulation for commands. Simulations are useful, Computer Science can help with that. Set up servers to run the processes.
  • Anthony: Made a project for basketball teams.
  • Andrew: Companies will look for personal projects to see that you actually know what you are doing. Just 3 or 4 could go the extra mile of making the job. Good way to show off knowledge about algorithms and data structures. Pathfinding algorithms, graph theory, and also sorting algorithms. Data visualization is a really big field.
  • Maybel: Triton AI, improve autonomous tracking abilities.
  • Allison: -
  • Nitya: -

Q: Clubs at Del Norte

  • Colein: CS in people managing, organizastion skills are very important
  • Anthony:
  • Andrew:
  • Maybel: School and robotics.
  • Allison:
  • Nitya:

Q: Tips for internships and jobs

  • Colein:
  • Anthony: Do not look at other people’s linkedin, huge demoralizer.
  • Andrew: Build a good network of people in order to get refferals from others. Really important if you want to get into a FAANG company. Make a lot of connectons on LinkedIn.
  • Maybel: Have a resume, get a list of your achievements. Know when to find your internships, starts hiring from Sept-November, when most of the interns there are finishing their internships. Get a resume done by early september for summer internships. Have proof of work that you have done. Call a bunch of engineers to decide what to do. Personal projects and teams are important, differentiates you from other students. MORE THAN JUST GPA AND MAJOR. SKILLS > NUMBERS. Ask local and smaller companies about internships, ask about high school internships and such. Find stuff you are interested in. Referrels are really important in the filtering process.
  • Allison:
  • Nitya: