Kaylee's Reflections on Computer Science
here is my computer science journey so far :)
Before this Class
I joined Girls in CS my freshmen year, but I quit after the first day because I thought it was too hard, and I didn’t know anyone in the club. However, I decided I wanted to rejoin my Sophomore year because I was really interested in CS and over the summer I had started learning basic scratch and learned from Sony’s Robot Programming KOOV kit ↓
I coded on Repl.it using Python, and volunteered at hackathons over the years, even helping make content. But this content was for mainly elementary school kids, and I wasn’t satisfied with my coding skills. No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn’t understand coding at all.
Starting out in APCSP:
Even just taking this class for three weeks, I have already noticed that I am much better at problem solving. I am able to complete my homework more efficiently. The class can get frustrating at times, when errors keep coming up, but it is such a gratifying feeling when that green check mark comes through. This is definitely something I want to pursue in the future.
Right Now
This summer I started working as a Research Assistant at UCSD’s Comparative Cognition Lab and from talking to the professionals there as well as the panel from last week, I have more clarity on what I want to major in the future. I would like to major in cognitive science with a specialization in machine learning! This is really exciting and I am very excited to learn important tools from this class that can help me!