So What?When I first arrived at UC I attended and honors retreat and met so many great friends. It made my transition to college much easier because when school started as I was walking around campus I seen many familiar faces. These relationships have been invaluable. For example one of my best friends Hannah would sit by me in class and would make sure I never felt lonely. We would do things from staying up late studying to cuddling in a hammock watching Netflix. She has made my freshman year memorable and also was not afraid to dance with me in the streets to our own music. As I traveled to Singapore I met many new individuals. I noticed when first arrived I was shy and struggled out of my environment but my best friends Mwansa and Khushboo were the first people talked to. They thought it was absolutely hilarious when sat beside them in the canteen and said, "hey my name is Dillon and I have no friends." I may be a little awkward but it made a lasting memory which was funny to look back upon. These two girls became close friends and helped me create a network of friends not only at the university but at church. We explored the city many times together and shopped till we dropped.
One new thing I learned is that life is short and to take advantage of whatever opportunities walk into your life. I lived my life to the fullest and I would never change a moment of it. It has been an amazing year full of twists and turns and I loved every one of them. Into the future I am confident I will have the knowledge and ability to travel anywhere in the world and experience a different culture just as I had in Singapore. Finally, this knowledge is important because it will affect the rest of my life and help me compete in a global marketplace and also conduct international business and relations with ease. |
Now What?If I were to give myself one piece of advice for the upcoming year it would be to work your hardest and take care of business, but don't forget to take some time for yourself to have fun. Life is to short to work it away and never have fun. Transitioning back to living at UC I will continue to volunteer for bearcat coders and help kids at the local STEM school understand basic programming. Additionally, with my hard work and dedication to learn new programming languages and methods I will have much new knowledge to share with them and hopefully help them one day become great engineers. As I have evolved this year my thoughts about who I am have also changed. I am a hardworking guy who believes If you give your all to achieve your goals and aspirations, only great things can come your way. My opportunity to work for IMS laboratory has given me the confidence in myself that I can actually achieve something great. They believed in me and have paid me to learn more about machine learning and practicing learning the many different algorithms which make amazing and new products and discoveries today from siri to better understanding the human genome. I am optimistically excited about what the future holds for me and look forward to what I can give back to the scientific community. As I continue to look for a coop this spring this information will give me the confidence and experience I need to ace an interview and hopefully land a coop position I will be proud to fill.
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So What?At the conclusion of my coop were required to give a short presentation to summarize what we have learned and what we have completed during our semester to the executives of the company. I specifically enjoyed how the executive level employees listened to our concerns and seemed to make it a priority to help us with any problems we may had encountered and improve the program for future students. Also with being in the Strategic Student Program, HR has planned plenty of events for us that help us network and practice our communication skills with many intelligent interesting individuals. They also included us in on the quarterly business meetings, which I found extremely interesting since I am interested in finance and business. The tasks I was challenged to do at Siemens was unlike anything I had done in school and it gave me a completely new perspective into the industry. Before my time at Siemens I was actively pursuing data science careers and doing research in this area. At Siemens I got to learn lots of full stack ideas. I got to take part in designing architecture of full stack systems, utilizing cloud infrastructure to dynamically scale micro services, version control, and utilizing unit testing more quickly get software to market with the minimal problems. All of these new ideas gave me the opportunity to try new things in software and better understand the direction I could take my career. Recently I have been trying to give back more to the open source community and create better software. I am now trying to include unit testing in all of the new programs I write and included a YAML file in my github repository that automatically builds the code and executes the testing framework. This allows future people to utilize the code I have written and also gives them peace of mind the code will work as planned. Contributing to open source software is an important part of being a software engineer and furthering the community helps future hackers to build creative and innovative software.
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Now What?I am super excited for what the future holds because the work experience I gained while at Siemens has allowed me to challenge myself as an individual. I was learning new technologies every day and understanding what it means to be a full-stack developed and software architect.
not only valued skills that would allow me to start my own company, but skills that have helped me better understand my career path. I hope to use my time effectively into the coming future and take more time to apply myself on starting and completing side projects and to better define my online presence through GitHub and LinkedIn. One goal I would set for myself for the upcoming future would be to work on more independent projects outside of school and utilize good programming techniques I learned at Siemens in my software. |
So What?All these activités have allowed me to find my place and hone in on what will make me happy. I feel like I am actually building a future here in Cincinnati that excites me and has something to look forward to. Getting out more in the city has truly allowed me to appreciate the cities beauty. One of my favorite activities is to introduce new people to its beauty and show them all the cool spots. Having this pride in my city has instilled in me an excitement to stay here that I previously didn't have. I was so ready to live in a new city, but with the new developments in OTR, all the amazing eateries and the amazing views have given me an appreciation that I needed.
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Now What?Going into the future I plan to invest the money I have gotten from my first freelance client into my personal brand and spend the Tuesdays and Thursdays I have free in the following semester for personal development. I am just going to continue what I do best and just enjoy life. I had to learn that life is more about the journey and focus more on my own happiness and I am excited to continue this into the future. Finally, I hope to continue to make new friends and instill in them the excitement that I have for the university and the city in general.
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So What?These lessons I have learned have given me the confidence to pursue things and not wait for others. In the past year, I have worked on several personal projects and met with many startup founders. Once I learned my value, I stopped worrying about failure. I have failed so many times in the past year and it has taught me to not fear failure.
I love this one quote, "You overestimate what you can accomplish in a year and underestimate what you can in five." This is so true for me, I was discouraged because my personal growth was slow, but looking back now, so much has changed. Four years ago, I had never coded before, and now I am working at Microsoft and working on my own startup. |
Now What?Now that I realize my worth, I am going after things many of my peers probably wouldn't. I negotiate contracts for work and demand $50 to $70 dollars per hour for my time. I'm planning to attend an incubator to work on my startup. I am getting ready to launch an MVP and begin the fund raising process. In life we have all the control and it really is as easy as putting yourself out there.
Into the coming year, I plan to work on my startup and possibly get clients for my engineering consulting company. I am excited for all the things I will learn in my senior year and what this year has to bring. |