What brought me here
14 Jan 2017Science and Music?
I am a 2nd Bachelor’s student at UH Manoa studying Computer Science, although it would actually be my 3rd Bachelor’s degree. Prior to this I attended Oberlin College in Ohio where I completed a double degree program in Chemistry and Violin performance.
I originally decided to major in chemistry with a plan to apply to medical school, but soon became more interested in scientific research, eventually settling on the pharmaceutical sciences. Majoring in music was a personal desire: I have played the violin for most of my life and the chance to study at an internationally reknowned music conservatory was too good to pass up.
During my time at Oberlin I never would have guessed that I ultimately would decide to pursue a career in the technology field. I did, however, have a breif brush with programming during a winter term project in my sophomore year involving computational chemistry. In the project I used a computer program for core-hole x-ray spectrosopy analysis, and involved some coding using Matlab. In hindsight, I realize I did enjoy the programming aspect of the project more than the science aspect, but I didn’t realize it at the time. If I were to do it over again, I would have taken some computer classes during my time at Oberlin. However, I would give up my Chemistry or Music study.
How I ended up studying computer science.
When I graduated from Oberlin, I began taking biology classes at UH Manoa, a field I hadn’t studied as a chem major but is required for pharmaceutical sciences. In one of my classes I became interested in Bioinformatics, which led me to take my first computer science class, ICS 111, in the spring of 2015.
I was still looking to apply for a masters program in Pharmaceutical science or Bioinformatics at that point, and went through all the steps short of submitting my applications. However, I began to realize how much I enjoyed writing computer programs: I was able to use the analytical and problem solving skills that I had developed through studying chemistry, but at the same time the whole process of creating a program felt incredibly similar to learning and practicing a piece of music.
And I think that makes sense. In music you have (typically) the requirements of the composer, and as the performer you have to decide how to meet them with the skill, techniques, and ideas you have available in order to create a pleasing performance. In both a focused practice session and a focused programming session I found the same feeling of being “in the zone”. After spending years straddling two disparate fields, computer science seemed like something that I was looking for all along.
Where I go from here.
As far as software engineering, it was relatively recently that I entered the technology field and I am essentially interested in anything that I can learn about precicely because there is so much to learn about. However, I am particularly interested in web development and cyber security.
I hope to gain more experience in creating software through learning about the software engineering process. Additionally I hope to be able to find an area of software engineering that I am most interested in and can focus on.
I have always enjoyed working with other people on projects, which were thus far mostly in music through playing string quartets and other ensembles. I have yet to have much opportunity to do group work in the technology field however, so this is also something that I look forward to experiencing.