Academic Enrichment:

While i was in high school I had the ability to take dual enrollment classes with Columbus State Community College and I am glad that I took those higher level classes. While some of the computer science classes didn’t translate into classes for my major they made me better understand computers and how logic works. I also had the ability to take advanced classes in Microsoft Excel and Access which is a great help with Engineering 1181 at the moment. These classes helped me decide that CSE was the correct path to take in college. I am hoping that now that I am at Ohio State I can maintain my high level of GPA I had in high school. It is a lot of fun to see the look of surprise when you tell someone your GPA is 4.3. There are more obstacles now that I am taking college classes. The obvious ones are that they are harder and require me to be more responsible with my time and studying for the class. However there are also a lot of things to help balance out the harder course load. There are tutor rooms for math and physics, which I am currently taking. As part of survey class I have to attend two first year success series events which there are ones based on time management and stress. I have already found that dealing with time and stress are my major issues because as a commuter I have can’t just get up and go to class I have to leave my house with plenty of time to deal with traffic. Also being a commuter I have job on the weekends which limits my study time to mostly during the week. Luckily there are plenty of quite areas around that I can study at such as the libraries or even buildings like Smith Lab have a lot of study room to work between classes.

Original Inquiry:

In high school I was required to take an internship class and work on a capstone project. I had the ability to work with a software company who is producing a video game. Through the internship I learned things from researching other games to coming up with a possible website design. However the most interesting part was getting to complete the capstone project. I had to design and code items that would be used in the game, the main thing was a tower because it is a tower defense game similar to Bloons Tower Defense. I spent a large number of hours researching different methods and functions in the Unity system and how well they worked. My completed result was for the company and can’t be discussed because of an NDA but for the internship class I had to complete a presentation about all the research I had done. Getting to see all the work that got put into the semester just to make something that seemed relatively small. I really hope that in my coming years I will get to participate in research, specifically regarding software the way I did for my internship when it was very important to let the company know what parts of a game are really good and what just doesn’t work. Some obstacles for that kind of research is how broad it is, in my internship it was specifically looking at tower defense games and seeing what people liked. Most companies have teams that go through feedback and reviews of their programs to see what is liked. I think in a few years my research ideas may change however into more of a hardware stand point and how to make certain things more functional, such as using Arduinos or Raspberry Pis to do a more specific task.