My name is Yifan Wang, and I am currently a 4th year student doing my second bachelor’s degree in computer science. Prior to this degree, I studied Economics in Beijing, China. During my last degree, I did a few internships that involved doing data analysis using Python (a programming language), which got me into the world of programming, and I really enjoy the feeling after building something on my own. After taking a few online courses in programming, I began to seriously consider if I should try something new and applied for UBC’s BCS program. In the past two years, I took a wide spectrum of computer science courses. Among all the areas, I am interested in operating systems because I always want to figure out how things work at a low level, and I am trying to get a better understanding of it by reading more books and experimenting with code.  

I have completed two co-ops in the past year. During the first co-op, I worked at an insurance company as a technical consultant, writing applications to make their workflow more efficient. Through this internship, I realized though technology can help improve efficiency of work, it cannot be achieved without thinking in our users’ shoes. We had a lot of design reviews with business teams to discuss whether the feature is what they need and if there is any improvement we could do, even if it’s just the position of a button. In most of the software developer jobs, we won’t get such chances working so closely with our actual users, but this experience really gave me a new perspective. I worked for a healthcare company in my second co-op as a software developer, working on their multi-platform dashboard. I got to learn and use a lot of cool technology that I have only heard of before. This co-op also makes me feel that I still have a long way to go before becoming a seasoned software developer, and I hope to learn more when I am at school, and also in my future jobs.