My Time at MC:
MC was an explosive time of my life, full of new experiences both in and out of the classroom. I met people from countries I'd never heard of, made friends with people who would've never crossed paths with a CS major, and met my wife. Even though the academic journey left me wanting (the CS program was in the process of evaporating), the 1:1 time with professors saved me from my own tendency for "analysis paralysis" and overcommitment. I didn't picture myself going to grad school, but when the time came anyway, I had a decent background in academic writing, communication, and research. MC's small liberal arts college style taught me to be much more open-minded and autonomous than I would've at a big state school.

What I'm Currently Up To:
I live in Sacramento CA with my wife and new baby, working remotely for Amazon as an Applied Scientist. I get to train state-of-the-art models on real-world problems at a huge scale. Amazon, like many big tech companies, is mandating their employees to return to the office (SF for me--a 2-3 hour trip), so I'm looking for new remote work in machine learning. In my spare time I usually play video games or go rock climbing.

How I Got Here and How MC Helped:
I have always been an indecisive person who worries about making the "best" decision. Ignoring my advisor's advice, I took waayyyy too many classes and extracurriculars, leading me to fall behind in my hardest classes and burnout during my junior year. Thankfully the CS professor, Dr. Ding, was encouraging and intentional enough to convince me to switch to CS from Chemical Physics. I found community in the programming team, and scraped together a CS degree from the adjunct instructors following Dr. Ding's departure. In all honesty, MC did not prepare me well for professional software development, but few schools do. It did get me in the door as a software developer at a couple local companies, though, where my skills were finally legitimized. In 2017, my wife and I started grad school at Colorado State. I met some folks who were receiving massive offers from Google and Microsoft to build computer vision models, and decided to follow in their footsteps. Computer vision and artificial intelligence at large turned out to be a great investment, leading me to work at Amazon.

General Advice for Incoming CS Majors:

1. There are folks who will tell you, "you either get it or you don't" or "sink or swim" mentality regarding success in learning CS. Research in CS education has challenged that, and instead pointed the finger at differences in learning styles, especially between men and women. When you are struggling, don't give up--be patient with yourself and find help from other smart folks. Your time in college is expensive--don't waste it!
2. Programming can be fun, but you're probably in CS for a job. As such, think critically about what you can do to find the most fulfillment and value from your career in CS. There are many, many different specialties within CS. Some specialties are more fun or lucrative than others. It's really hard to articulate this to students and many folks struggle in their first years on the job. Look up "ikigai" for more on this topic.
3. In college you are mostly spoon-fed, meaning you rarely get to be creative, do what is fun, or think like an engineer. This does not prepare you well for industry, and compounds the problems mentioned in #2. So, build things on your own! Learn a bit of Unity or Godot and write a game. Take on the challenge of HTML/CSS/JS and make a website. Once you learn that first language, you've opened the door to learning (almost) everything else. At some point I realized that the ability to quickly learn new tools and turn ideas into reality is much more important than a list of languages I'm proficient in.
4. A CS degree is generally enough to get you an interview at a local company. If you want to broaden your horizons and work for a more renown or competitive tech company like Google, you need to prepare. Post personal projects on GitHub. Practice programming problems on LeetCode (I personally prefer Interview Cake). Have someone proofread your resume. Read up on what to expect. An advanced degree can help too, but it's not strictly necessary. All this said, there are definitely good software companies to work for who don't have extreme interviews like Google.