Bio
Course of Study: Computer Science and English double major
Hometown: Boulder, CO
Interests include: Knitting, crafting, reading, plants.
If you could re-do all of your experience with computer science, would you do anything differently?
I would have made more friends in the department in my earlier years! I always did okay in Computer Science classes, but never really felt invested until I joined ACM my junior year and suddenly had friends who were also interested in Computer Science and computational thinking. Knowing people in the department and having friends around to work through tough problems with has been monumentally helpful. Plus, when you don’t know anyone it’s easy to feel like everyone is worlds ahead of where you are—but that isn’t true! When you approach Computer Science collaboratively instead of competitively, it becomes a much more enjoyable experience.
What’s your favorite thing about CS (or math) at LC?
The community!
What has been your favorite course at LC?
I took a Dante class my sophomore year with Karen Gross, and it was such a wonderful experience through and through. We read the entirety of the Divine Comedy, and I absolutely fell in love with Dante’s poetry, and I learned a lot about myself, which I wasn’t expecting from a medieval literature class.
What project or experience (in computing) are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of what I have taught myself. LC classes give you a great foundation, but I decided late last year that I wanted to focus on User Interface Design, and we don’t have any courses for that. So over the summer I really jumped into teaching myself that profession—I did online tutorials, I read articles, I participated in daily creative challenges from Adobe, I practiced coding in HTML, CSS, PHP and javascript, which I had gotten rusty in. I still have a lot to learn, but I am really proud of the work that I have put in so far and the progress I have made.
What’s some advice you have for other computationally minded students?
Get your hands dirty! I think one of the biggest differences I feel between English classes and Computer Science classes is that in an English class, you will be given everything you need to succeed. In Computer Science, you need to go out and find the answer sometimes, and that’s not always comfortable, but it is ultimately more realistic, and the more you practice the better it feels. So if you don’t know how to do something, go for it anyways!
What is your favorite programming language?
I really like CSS. It doesn’t really require the same kind of computational thinking as a more stand-alone language, but I really enjoy the process of applying styles and figuring out how to make your content fit together the way you want it to.
