CS Learning Journal

   === Industry Expert Interview === Introduction      For my interview, I decided to talk to someone who I work closely with. His name is Manny Valladares, and he is a successful web development contractor for various businesses. We've met from a non-related industry before, but I've been in contact with him ever since and I've never gotten the chance to sit down with him and understand what he does as his professional job, and the more I listened to what it is he does for work the more I realized he was able to adapt to a changing industry. As someone who is not entirely sure what specific industry I want to work in, I am interested in his story on how he built his personal networks, and adapted to a constantly-changing field and how he was able to remain competitive, especially maintaining his own private business. I also know he has a background in video game development and has close connections at Meta developing AR technology. One of the thin...

 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: S pecific M easurable A ttainable R elevant T ime-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 ...

 Reflecting on Study Weaknesses Last week as a part of my learning journal I took a moment to reflect on some positive study habits I felt I was strong in, and some I felt I was weak in. This week, I have been given the opportunity to take one of those habits I felt week in previously and reflect on it. I utilized this resource, from AcademicTips.org  and one of the things it went over was when to study. It gave a few good pieces of advice, and here are some tactics I will try to implement moving foward: Study within 24 hours of learning a new topic. Research shows that up to 80% of new learned material can be forgotten within the first 24 hours, so by reviewing a topic less than a day after learning it you are more likely to retain the information, and it will be easier to keep that in long-term memory leading up to taking an exam. Avoid marathon study sessions and back-to-back studies. It's much easier to get overwhelmed by academics when everything is pushed so close toget...

 During this past week at CSUMB, I had learned quite a bit of stuff. To begin, I'd like to focus for a moment on some study skills I feel strong at and some study skills I feel weak in, based on how I've felt these past few weeks so far.    Study Strengths  Maintaining a schedule:       One of the good habits I feel like I've picked up is maintaining a schedule and planning out my days ahead. This has been my first time formally using a schedule where I take a moment to see all of my upcoming assignments and plot out in my calendar program what assignments I will do at what times and for how long. It's been helping me quite a bit plan out and make sure I have enough time for everything I need done. Reading:      I generally feel that I am a fast and efficient reader. I've been able to read quite quickly and the information that I read I am usually able to retain quite well. I feel like I am able to extract the main idea of a writing...

I've had quite an eventful first week at California State University, Monterey Bay. Although I had  technically  started a few weeks ago, my official first week has been this past week, starting September 2nd, 2025. This week alone has not only been very informative, but it's also helped me prepare for what's to come during this learning journey I have set ahead of me. In a way, all of this preparation has helped ease me of my worries as now I feel confident in the structure of the course, as well as confidence in the faculty who will be assisting me and the team members that I will continue this journey with. I still have a lot to do in terms of preparation -- these first two courses are all about preparation after all -- but so far I've already had the chance to create a weekly schedule that I will adhere to, get used to communicating with my professors, and I have already had a meeting with my team members and we have a structure on note-taking.  While we haven't...