Monday Mojo - Degree in Sight

 Hello everyone, Key here again. 👋

   This year has been filled with a lot of learning and a lot of aimless wandering.

       This Monday Mojo is most likely to loosely follow other posts similar to it. Mostly to update any readers, or people whom stumble upon my page. I've seen a small influx of readers, most of which seem to be interested in projects more than anything. I will try my best to create some lists, recommendations, etc. for the upcoming weeks to hopefully provide some more information. I'm thinking of releasing some of my own projects (beginner stuff, sorry!) for others to view.

- Monday Mojo Tip -

    As an excessive researcher, my Monday Mojo tip is to find something that you're passionate about, even momentarily, and try to build on it. One of my project fixations for school was astronomy. I joined my love for astronomy with programming, and created a database called AstroBase to store information about astronomical bodies such as planets, moons, stars, and galaxies. It is, to this day, still my favorite project. Why? Because it was something that I loved.

    Often, I find it hard to want to code outside of programming assignments. My schedule is too packed or my stress is too high, so I put it off. I make excuses, the typical buts that leave people looking back on their past with regret. So, I take this time to, hopefully, inspire you even in your momentary get-up-and-go mindset, to find something you're passionate about and try to do something with it. Don't let it sit in your mind and be forgotten. Write it down, write a programming plan, a flowchart, even a code outline. Just do something with it, so it's out there, tangible, and you'll find yourself face-to-face with possibility. You choose what to do next. Leave it sitting there, existing, or build on it. Even now, I look back on old ideas and think of new additions for them, or reasons why this part or this part won't work. It's a long process, but it's better to return to potential ideas than to forget them altogether.

- Degree & Future -

    I'm approaching the end of my final semester of college, which means I am on the cusp of graduation. However, this is not the end of my education journey. I will be transferring to another college to continue my studies.

    Unfortunately, I am unsure of how I wish to continue my degree. I will be spending the next several weeks researching a multitude of degrees. Some of these will be listed at the end of this post, just to show some options for others that may be interested in other tech-related fields.

    My semester has been focused on computer architecture, which has led me to discover the important, but no less terrible, MIPs Assembly. I got through it, but it was not willingly. This language is, by far, my least favorite (as expected). However, my professor brought up a fun way to learn about assembly languages, called CoreWars. It's essentially a game where you code warriors to fight other programs. Git has some premade warriors. Rather than MIPs, they use RedCode.

Degrees that I am looking into:

• Computer Science BS (who would've known? straight out of left field, this one)
• Data Science BS (something more uniform, perhaps?)
• Graphic Information Technology [Full-stack web development] BS (I've had my eye on this since day one)
• Software Engineering BS (a basic one, I feel)
• Biomedical Engineering BSE (biology, my first love)

    As always, the field of computer science/technology seems a bit washed out lately. The Software Engineering and GIT degrees offer some similar roles. Data Science seems to offer the most extensive list of career opportunities, including several with high expected growth rates. Biomedical Engineering has decent career opportunities, but I feel like biology is a path more so taken out of love than anything else. From face value, the degree that stands out to me the most is Data Science. Perhaps a data science BS + biological data science MS (eventually)? I guess we'll see.

Thank you for joining me on this wonderful Monday. May your mojo grow-jo 😄