CST 300 - Week 4

Part 1: Education Goals

     My top priority is to finish my Bachelor's through CSU Monterey Bay. I will break that two-year goal into each individual year, and those year-long goals into each 8-week class. Besides that primary goal, I really just want to learn and master as many topics as I can while I have the opportunity. Another sub-goal will be to learn one language well enough to become certified once I finish the program. I also hope to expand my GitHub repository until I can safely use it as a portfolio. I will work towards this goal by evaluating the progress I'm making at the end/start of each class. I will check if any work I accomplished in that class will be a good fit for my portfolio, especially if it was a class in a language that I want to become proficient in.

Part 2: Career Goals

      Simply put, my primary goal would be to find a career path where I could both use my degree and serve a larger purpose. I feel the skills learned in this program and ones like it are not only versatile but adaptable to many industries as long as those industries have some dependence on technology. My two greatest life-long interests have been education and different forms of creative art. If I had the choice, I would want to find a career in software that in someway intersected with one of those topics. Ideally, I would like to achieve a position, or at least have already taken my first steps towards a position as a software developer in the next 5 years. I hope to achieve that by building experience now and after the program ends. My current career sub-goal is to search for an entry-level position or internship as I am finishing my degree, even if that means I don't find anything until I graduate. Currently, my only work experience has been, at best, tangentially related to the things I would like to accomplish with my degree. So, I'm ready to start making progress towards my goals.

Part 3: ETS Test

I'm happy to know there is some sort of standardized test for computer programming. Mostly because of what I described earlier about not feeling like there was a clear set of skills or benchmarks before someone can call themselves a "programmer". I am excited to have something concrete to test what I've learned, but I don't think I will do much better than 70% of the students who pass it since most of my coding experience has only come from classes so far.

Learning Journal

Our lecture this week was about how to set effective goals. (As I've hopefully done above.) After this module, I've become more interested in this topic and how it can positively affect my life. In addition to this reading, I've looked up other ways to focus more clearly on what I want to achieve. Another exercise I plan to do for mapping out my long-term plans was the 5-25 rule. You start with 25 things, no matter how far-fetched, that you would like to accomplish in your life. After you list 25, you have to cut it down to 10 that you would really like to do, then you cut down to things that you would really, really like to do and prioritize them in order of how important they are to you. These things can be quickly achievable, and in that case, once you complete something on your list, you can replace it with something new. Or continue working towards any opportunities that achieving that goal has brought you.
     The goal is to focus your efforts on only the things you truly want to achieve and are worth working towards. You have to weed out the goals that have become more distracting than motivating. The thinking behind this method is that the things in our lives that are worth achieving take much more time and energy than we anticipate. And focusing on a handful of tasks with more of our energy and focus will yield much better results than half-heartedly attempting a larger number of goals.
     This week also continued our discussion of Ethics, focusing on logical arguments. The last college class I've taken was an intro to logic course, so this week was mostly review. It will still help me form the basis of the ethical argument I will use in my essay.