I am a fourth year computer science student at UBC. Prior to studying computer science I completed a degree in life science and earth science at UBC. My goal was to work in health care as a nurse or medical lab technologist. However, after volunteering at the hospital and interacting with patients and clinicians, I realized that it was not something that was suitable for me. During the final year of the degree, I decided to challenge myself and take an introductory computer science course on HTML and javascript (CPSC 101). It was tough at the beginning because I had no programming experience but I put in a lot of effort outside of class. As the course progressed, I realized that it was fun and engaging as we gained hands-on experience through labs and projects.
I recently completed eight months of software engineering coop at Collabware, a local startup. Collabware specializes in records management software for SharePoint. My duties was to build console applications for tools used internally and externally. Some of the tools I built include smoke test automation, automated environment configuration and extracting data from a client’s file plan. I experienced how software development works on a larger scale, the agile process and learned to program in c#.
Outside of school, I enjoy attending hackathons where I can meet new people and start building solutions to problems in a short amount of time. Hackathons encourage everyone to try new things and help one another. This year, I took on a new volunteer position as a Microsoft student partner at UBC. I hope my team and I will be able to hold some meaningful and fun events for the students and encourage more people to build amazing software with the free tools that Microsoft offers.
After completing my degree next May, I hope to either find a software developer job where I am able to combine health care and technology or start a consulting company.