Learning Journal - Week 4

 Educational Goals

     After the reading from this week's lecture material, I want to take a moment to step back and set some educational goals for myself. I want something that is easy to remember, as well as "SMART". That is:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound

     The first goal I want to achieve during my time here is: build my career portfolio. During my learning at CSUMB, I want to be able to learn from all of the projects and group work, and find time to focus on personal projects and kickstart a portfolio I feel confident sharing. At the very least, I want to achieve:

- A working website I designed and built by myself.
- A working showcase of at least 3 working applications
- A blog on the website that walks through how I got each one working

    The second educational goal I want is to learn Graphics Programming. While I may not be 100% certain on my industry goal, at the time of writing I am very fascinated in this industry, so I want to be able to learn graphics programming tools like OpenGL and CUDA, and I believe that will make me quite competitive. This is achievable through the elective course, but it can also be achieved during my own personal time.

    I am also hoping to hone in my skills on Web Development. I spend a lot of time doing graphic design work as a hobby, so I would like to be able to translate that into a form of user interface design learning, which I know is achievable through the web development courses in this program.

 

Career Goals

    It is difficult to imagine specific career goals this early into my journey; however, I have come up with two main goals I want to achieve.

    The first goal is to build my professional network. As I am learning which industry I want to work in, I plan on spending time finding as much people as I can in those fields so I can learn off of them. And, within that opportunity, I can begin building my professional network so I can have a source to bring me in to specific companies.

    The second goal is to learn my worth. From one of the reading materials I went over, there is a tool by salary.com that estimates someone's rough value based on the title they possess and field they work in. As I'm preparing to go into the professional work industry, I would like to be able to know how valued my skills are so I can use that to my advantage when negotiating a salary.

 

ETS Computer Science Test

    The ETS field test is an assessment that tests students' critical thinking skills and knowledge in the Computer Science field. The exam covers various content over the field of computer science, ranging from programming to discrete mathematics.

    After looking over the sample test, there was some amount of it that I was able to understand, I do remember some discrete math and the programming section was relatively straight-forward to me, but I did get caught up a bit on the architecture questions and the more specific software design questions. I do believe that the current program from CSUMB will help me become a lot more confident in taking this exam. Some of the later courses I will be taking will cover software design (CST-338), logic (CST-329), and algorithms (CST-370). From this alone, I believe I may even be able to achieve about an 80% grade, and I believe if I spend more time understanding the sample problems, I could even reach a 90-95% grade.

 

Weekly Learning

    This week of learning has prepared me to set personal and professional goals. I've gone over a few resources that recommend me some personal goals as well as professional goals and I plan to adhere to these goals that I've set for myself. I've also been able to get introduced to the ETS Computer Science examination and know what concepts to prepare myself for so I can better understand my knowledge in this field. Our professor has made it clear that this exam is not a be-all end-all for our career, but rather will provide us with the opportunity to reflect on our learning leading up to the assessment. 

    In my other class, CST-300, I am also preparing to write an argumentative essay focusing on the ethical implications of AI training, so I've been spending time thinking on how Artificial Intelligence is shaping the professional and personal industry around us, and I've been able to spend some time discussing with classmates the effects of such.

     To conclude, I plan on going through my calendar schedule and I want to see if I can allocate some time specifically for building up my portfolio and maybe learning some HTML ahead of time before my web development class so I can start planning how to layout my portfolio website. I look forward to learning more tools to help me organize my time and my projects, and I anticipate being able to put those skills into practice. 

Comments

  1. JessicaOctober 4, 2025 at 5:05 PM

    Your journal has a very professional feel and tone to it! This is beautifully formatted and easy to follow. I definitely need to make revisions to my own, including how I can tidy up my goals. You already have so much more experience than I could only hope to someday have, so I know you'll be able to achieve your goals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brianna T.October 10, 2025 at 4:14 PM

    I enjoyed reading your Ideas on how to make the most of your learning through out the program and find where you want to go. While I struggled in choosing which option I liked most it's comparable to your struggle to find the one for you. I think taking internships in different parts of CS while you are in the program can help you to navigate where you want to go after graduating. I loved your layout and methods!

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