Processing a new beginning, literally and in code.

After getting accepted into the UW, I had a lot of programs on my hand. I had gotten accepted into the Honors Program, the STARS Engineering program, and an invitation the UW WiSE-UP Summer Bridge Program). The STARS Program is a 2-year engineering program with a 5-year plan meant to prepare students in their academic pursuit of engineering with both the soft and academic skills to succeed. I had to decide from the advice of a STARS student (who my CSF advisor connected me with) and my reasons which program to choose or both. What would my UW experience look like if I had decided to join both the STARS and the Honors Program? This was the question I used in "processing" my decision. I am glad and do not regret only sticking to the STARS Program as I have been able to graduate with my B.S. in Computer Science as a proud cohort 4 STARS student. I can attest to it now, that my UW experience would have had a very unbalanced work-life balance if I had took on both. The curriculum of both the Honors Program and STARS Program is rigorous in its workload and highly competitive.

The Honors Program is wide-reaching in its interdisciplinary sense; one of the requirements is a study-abroad which I actually ended up doing regardless (I did not know I would even study abroad). The STARS Program is challenging in its engineering courses and career-related activities to prepare students to be the world-class engineer they can become. Even though I was not able to partake in the Honors Program, I did want to be well-rounded in my academics to open my mind. I ended up taking the Chinese language courses, up to the 300-level, with a study abroad in the summer to learn more about my Chinese heritage. I feel like I have been able to regain some of my identity as a proud Chinese Asian American. I did not know how to speak the Mandarin dialect, but I can now! I can also write Chinese as well. 我非常喜欢用普通话，广东话，还有西班牙语聊天。 (TN: I especially like to chat in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish.) Aside from the study abroad, which you'll find in another post, I took on leadership roles to help the communities I am a part of. I became a teacher, student assistant, club officer, and council member. I'll write more on these too in future posts! For now, let's dive more into the "processing" in the coding sense.

I had mentioned that I chose the STARS Program, but I did not have to decide whether or not I wanted to join the WiSE-Up Summer Bridge Program with Women in Science and Engineering. I knew I wanted to do it, so I could learn more about the engineering community and resources at UW before my fall start. Over the summer, I was able to work with faculty and students from the engineering community. I got to meet Stuart Reges, a principal CS lecturer whose Java book I've read. He showed us some really fascinating algorithmic art done in Processing, and then we got to work with Alex Miller, an undergrad at the UW majoring in CS. Alex introduced us to Processing, and I have some work displayed below of some projects I got to work on. There is one more, which is a recursive tree, but unfortunately that is lost to history. xD

Processing is a very touching language for me as it is my first university experience with coding. I also like making art, so it allows me to utilize my creative sense. Aside from CS work, WiSE-Up exposed us to other engineering professions. My team's final project ended up being an interdisciplinary-engineering product: a 3D-printed cane with motion-sensing. Our team consisted of members pursuing mechanical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science (that's me). This was the starting experience with engineering on a university-level, and this was only touching how intertwined all engineering fields are! After "processing" this fact, I knew in my coursework that I wanted to experience a little bit of everything on the engineering sense as well. I knew from this experience that I did not like the hardware aspect as much as I did the high-level coding -- but I decided to dabble more in my computer science study regardless. I'll share some Verilog hardware projects I worked on CSE 369 in another post, but know that I can do a little bit of everything. The learning never stops with me. :)

Let the art gallery begin! Caution: the last piece furthest down, "Crazy Triangles" may induce seizures. Please proceed with caution.