Hello Readers!
I’m a CS major from Chicago and have spent most of my life in the city; I enjoy developing code for microcontroller systems, biking and skiing. The purpose of this blog post will be to explore some of the skills I want to develop over the course of this semester, especially in relation to the ENG 198 Missing Basics course.
Decomposing Problems
One of the most applicable missing basics I hope to grasp this semester will be the ability to decompose problems. Looking at many large development projects decomposing the requirements of the project into smaller, easier to visualize portions helps bring the project closer to reality. While certain methods are taught to solve certain smaller problems, if I am not able to break the larger project down into these identifiable problems (and following solutions) any skills I have gained are useless. To this end I will attempt to proactively decompose any development projects I come across over the course of the semester.
Ethics
Ethics has been one of the things least discussed or taught over my educational career. While some discussion of it can be found in many humanities classes, ethics in relation to Computer Science or Engineering in general has yet to find a way into any of my studies. While I look forward to any discussion of this within the Eng 198 curriculum, after some thought I think one of the best ways to better address ethics within my education is to better define what I wish to accomplish with my studies. Outside of premeditated unethical acts I believe that one of the few ways that they do take place is when a person’s motivations or desires have not been fully realized. In order to improve my sense of ethics within my field, I will try to better develop my goals in what I wish to accomplish with my education.
Communicating: Write and Present
Finally, one of the last skills I wish to develop in relationship to this course is my ability to communicate. Specifically I would like to develop two facets- first I would like to improve my personal writing ability, while academic writing is groomed by many classes the ability to write about oneself is not really addressed. I think the blog entries will help with this. The other thing I would like to develop is my ability to convey more technical parts of my knowledge with people of other disciplines, whether those disciplines be within engineering or not. I think that working with many other engineering majors this semester will help with this as well.
Missing Basics vs. Math and Science
I enjoy the idea of the missing basics (as is showed by my taking part in this class), I believe that it is an excellent complement to the intensive math and science curriculum taught at this institution. I think that missing basics benefit as a function of my technical knowledge. In terms of the proportion of missing basics to math and science type classes, I think that students could be served well by taking 2-3 of these types of courses over their engineering career. Ultimately we are needed for our technical and problem solving abilities, missing basics types education serves to enhance our knowledge.
