Set Your Educational Goals
After going through the readings in this module and reflecting on my learning plan, I’m looking forward to developing practical skills that should help me in my career. This includes hard skills like software engineering, database administration, and data science, as well as soft skills like collaboration, project management, and networking.
I may want to pursue a master’s degree after completing CS Online, or I may end up getting a job that keeps me busy learning new things, or maybe both. I’m definitely a proponent of lifelong learning, so I’m sure I’ll keep on learning no matter what. This program should help me to reach the next step in my journey, whatever that may be.
Set Your Career Goals
My primary goal right now is to gain more work experience and become more established in my career. Completing CS Online and earning a Computer Science B.S. should help me in the job market, since many jobs specifically list having a computer science degree or a similar technical degree as a requirement.
As far as where I want to work and what I want to do, I’m keeping my options open. Where I end up working isn’t entirely in my control, but I tend to gravitate towards more innovative, startup-like cultures. As long as I can keep on learning and improving things, I’ll be happy wherever I work.
ETS Computer Science test
After reviewing the ETS Computer Science sample test, I’m confident that I’ll be able to pass it. I’m pretty familiar with most of the material in the exam, though I could definitely benefit from preparing a bit more, and I should be more ready before I take the actual exam. As far as what percentile I’ll score, it’s difficult to say, since it’s also based on how well other students perform, but I’m hoping to do well on it.
What I learned this week
The two main things I worked on this week were the industry interview and the outline for my ethics paper. For my ethics paper, I’m writing about lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), so I spent some time learning more about the issue and the ongoing debate surrounding it. I also learned that I live near Anduril, a startup that makes autonomous weapons systems. I hadn’t really thought too much about defense tech before, but it’s obviously crucial to global security, and there are a lot of talented engineers making frighteningly cool stuff. Looking forward to learning more about the tech and the ethical issues around it as I write my paper.