SENIOR YEAR CLASSES
I applied to graduate and meet my requirements to finish out my degrees by the end of winter quarter, though I'm staying through the spring on scholarship. This is the end of college life, with a look forward to my post-college job. I'm not sure that I completely figured myself out, but I can say I got more confident in myself. I joined UW's history honor society staff at Phi Alpha Theta and am a tutor and organizer for the Economics Undergraduate Board. I'm doing a mentorship with a Meta analyst and will put on a concert with Music for Charity. For an end to a huge chunk of my life, it's not too bad.
CSE 414 Databases
I’ve been trying to take a class in SQL for years, right after I saw it as a frequent job requirement for data analytics-related roles. This course was in the Allen School but for non-majors, so I had fewer issues getting into it than I did with informatics core data classes. The artifact attached is a link to an application I put together, or rather added a lot on top of a template framework for, that would allow patient and caregiver scheduling of COVID vaccine appointments. This is likely the last computer science course I take at the UW, and the process of getting into this class and having a bunch of majors in the class anyway meant I had a really difficult time with it. I had to convince myself that I belonged in this course, even though I met the prerequisites, and that I didn’t somehow fake my way to doing well in it. That’s probably what I took most from this class; the SQL skills are useful, but this is a tangible representation that I do know what I’m doing.
CSSS 490 Capstone
This is the capstone for the data science minor that I actually took last spring and will TA this spring. I think including it here at the end of my college experience makes the most sense as a bow on my college experience. I have the chance to work closely with a professor in redesigning the class based on my own experience last year and get to hear presentations on the use of data science in multiple fields, from neuroscience, to astronomy, to social work. The approach to learning is generalist; how can these skills be actually applied? Despite my set of computing classes, I don’t have the actual skills to be someone whose whole job is making websites or doing ‘computer science.’ I can, however, do data science, and it makes me feel like my classes went somewhere to see how those skills can be applied. Learning largely for the sake of learning, it turns out, can have practical applications. Also, with my career immediately post-college as an office-job analyst, I can keep these skills to use on less immediately ‘finance’ or ‘sales’-type positions, because so many jobs out there need them.
MUSEN 303 Marching Band (again)
My original reflection on this class was one of hope, where having band, even without the physical marching, during my COVID year made me stick with music in a way that would have been lost if I hadn’t done it in my first quarter. I thought including it again here, in my senior year, would bring it full circle. Band is a huge component of my social life and I have found my current housemates within my section. It’s also a huge stressor with hours of rehearsal during fall quarter and its absence is felt in winter quarter, where everything becomes distant and lonely in the icy drizzle. I can’t say that this has been smooth sailing all the way through; I’ve felt sidelined and not listened to and like I don’t matter much when you can’t hear my quiet clarinet over the brass. I’ve lost friends when they graduate and start each new year trying to reforge relationships in a constantly shifting social circle. I don’t think I can leave feeling like I made a splash in the band, but I don’t think I need to have been the leading light to have this be part of my identity. This picture is at my last home game, my last time in Husky Stadium, where things officially end. I cried about five minutes after it was taken, but the happiness in this picture is real.
