All throughout elementary and highschool, my mind was set on becoming a Business major. I can remember being a kid, putting my father’s coat on and looking in the mirror feeling empowered, as if what I wore made me important. My older brother was a Marketing major, so he was a huge influence on my college aspirations and career goals. I was so convinced this was my calling that before I left for college, my brother and I were contacting retails stores trying to set an appointment for me to get a tailored suit. It was not until my second year of college where I realized the business path was not for me. My mother insisted on me going into my freshman year undeclared to have some time to really decide on what I want to do. This turned out to be wonderful advice and changed my entire mindset.
I was first exposed to software engineering in my freshman year while attending Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. My next door neighbor was a Computer Science major and was the main reason I chose to pursue this field. I can still recall him showing me a program he created using Java that would return the time it took for the user to click ten circles on the screen. Something as simple as that got me hooked. From then on, I wanted the power to create. Business is a great field to study and is present in all aspects of life, but all businesses either provide a service, product, or entertainment. I did not want to learn how to market my product to the appropriate audience or how much interest is compounded in a savings account after 20 years. I wanted to take my thoughts and ideas and be able to produce something. The following year, I took my first programming course that went over the basics of Java.
From then on, I have been trying to learn as much as I can to apply to my own personal aspirations. I hope to learn more about creating software that is very user interactive. Websites and mobile applications are the biggest interests of mine and I hope through this class and the following courses I take, I will be able to implement my own ideas with the tools and skills I learn.