Week 1

Today I completed my first week at my new school program for computer science. This program is something I've been both anxious and excited for for several months. It's nice to finally be in the program, and not waiting for it to start.

I think the biggest thing I learned this week was APA formatting. My past schools used MLA formatting. APA might be new to me, but it didn't feel to dissimilar to how I remember MLA being. That being said, I haven't had to cite anything in MLA since before the pandemic. It could be that I don't remember MLA very well.

I also learned a little about the school I'm attending. Apparently it used to be a military base! After the military based was closed it was repurposed/reformed into a school.

One of the essays we have to write in this class is analyzing an industry that we're interested in, and coming up with a plan to get a job in that industry. One of our assignments for this week was making an outline for this essay. This was easily the most difficult assignment of the week. I haven't written a proper essay since before the pandemic. I'm also not sure if I've written an essay outline. I've always planned essays as I've written them. While I think this did make it harder to make the outline, it was really interesting to see a side to essay writing that I haven't seen before.

For my essay I decided to write about Nintendo. Nintendo's a huge part of my childhood, as I grew up playing their games. As I was reading the essay assignment, Nintendo was the only company to write about that came to mind. I managed to narrow the essay down to the Nintendo Technology Department. The NTD focuses on developing consoles and hardware.

The program I'm a part of has a big emphasis on group work. We're even paired up with one group for the whole program! I can see the value in this. Jobs are going to have you work in groups, so it's good to be able to practice that. There are some challenges to group work, especially since I'm not used to working with a group in this capacity. I think that these challenges will become easier as my group works together more and more.

Based on the first week, I'm feeling pretty good about the program! It looks like it'll be challenging, but I also think I will learn some valuable things from it.