Where I’m at

I am currently pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Software Engineering at Western Governors University. Each term requires completing a minimum of 12 credit units, equivalent to 3–4 courses over six months. I’m pleased to share that I have already completed 13 credit units this term, including an additional course on Version Control. I am now working on my sixth course, Front-End Web Development, and have submitted my final assignment. I’m currently awaiting the evaluation to finalize the course so that I can move on to more courses.

Courses I’ve taken so far

So far I have completed the following courses:

• Introduction to IT
• Natural Science Lab
• Web Development Foundations
• Introduction to Programming in Python
• Version Control

Introduction to IT was my first course into the program. It was certainly a bit more challenging than I anticipated because there are a lot of terms and concepts to memorize. It was a good course though because I enjoyed learning about the history of computers. Learning about vacuum tubes and the first generation of computers was particularly interesting. For those that are unfamiliar with what vacuum tubes are, they were a critical component for electric computers to perform computations. They generated a ton of energy and heat though, and so were very unreliable to use. Here’s a picture of a group of them:

The Natural Science Lab was a straightforward course where you had to conduct an experiement on a particular scientific topic. Being the physicist wannabe that I am, I did an experiment on Netwon’s Second Law of Motion. The law basically states that the acceleration of an object is based on how heavy the object is and how hard you push it. To perform the experiment, I bought a da Vinci catapult replica and started shooting a bunch of small objects of differing mass across my living room and jotting down the results. My kids loved it! It was so much fun!

The Web Development Foundations course wasn’t too bad. I had to refresh my memory on a couple of basic HTML and CSS concepts that I barely had to utilize in my career thus far. Nonetheless, it was a good refresher and I learned a couple of things that I hadn’t before with the animation features of CSS.

I flew through the Introduction to Programming in Python course. Not to toot my own horn, but I was not surprised. When I first started learning about programming and buying books on computer science, Python was my first programming language. I have been using it frequently for the last five years now either in scripting, automation tests, APIs, GUIs, etc., so I knew I was going to do well. I skim read all of the material that was given to me, took the practice test, and then went immediately for the objective assessment. It was super easy.

Same with the Version Control course. I’ve been working with git on an almost daily basis for years. I skipped the majority of the content and just did the assessment.

Up Next Courses

After I complete my Front-End Web Development course, I’m going to take an IT Leadership Foundations course which is supposed to help me understand better on how to work with teams and lead them. Not something I’m really interested in learning (not that I don’t like to work with others), but I want to knock it off as fast as I can so that I can move on to other courses.

The last two courses that I’m hoping that I can do before my term ends are on Probability and Statistics and Applied Algebra. Looking forward to knocking those off soon too so that I can move on to a course that I’m very excited for which is Data Structures and Algorithms.

Reflection

I am very fortunate to have found a school like WGU that allows you to advance at your own pace. For someone like me, who is already in the field and has a ton of responsibilities outside of work, this has been a huge blessing. Looking forward to continuing to excel in my degree!