7 Habits of a Successful person

This week in class Dr. Tao went over the 7 habits stated in a book that suggested one should have to be successful.

The first three, be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and put first things first, are the habits needed to achieve independence. I can definitely be a lot more proactive. I'm pretty good with beginning/keeping the end in mind. Ever since starting college, I've been making sure I took the right classes that would allow me to graduate on time. The first things first habit was very intimidating. It really made me realize that life is going to be about sacrifices and sometimes not all the rocks are going to be able to fit into my jar. I just hope I won't have to sacrifice anything important to me. Thinking about which priorities would be my big rocks and which would be my small rocks gives me a headache, too. That camping idea didn't sound like a bad idea, but maybe instead of 24 hours of isolation, maybe just a few hours on the beach would work.

The next three habits are used to achieve interdependence. I don't have too much to say about these habits. I understand all of them and I am definitely going to work at improving those habits. I guess I don't have much to say about these habits because I think I should put more effort in becoming independent before really committing myself to achieving interdependence.

The seventh habit is sharpening the saw. I feel like I have a long way to go in terms of this habit. For the physical aspect, I feel like I'm on the right track. I get about four hours of exercise a week, and I'm going to try and start eating healthier this week. For stress management, exercising works the best for me, but I also like listening to relaxing music or playing a few games of Starcraft 2. For the emotional aspect, I know I kind of have a long way to go. I'm not a very open person, but now I realize the importance of being open.

I did the personality report and there was a 2% difference between my top type, ESFP and ESTP. After reading the descriptions of both, I think I'm a mix of the two. There are traits of ESFP that I do not have, good people skills specifically, and part of ESTP that I don't have, doing good under pressure. But I am object oriented (ESFP) and I like to think logically and practically when solving problems (ESTP).

Progress on Group Project

Last week, CST 300 was cancelled, so my group met at the time the class usually takes place. At the meeting we decided on a topic for our presentation, the development of video games. Everyone is interested in entering game development out of college, but most of us knew very little about the actual process and roles, so we decided this would be a great topic to do. We have both CD and CSIT majors in our group, so we decided to split the research into two categories, the design roles and the technical roles. I know a little bit about the technical roles in video games, but I had no clue there were so many design aspects. It was very interesting to hear the other members of my group talk about single vs. multiplayer gameplay and the importance of user interface. After our group meeting we decided to meet again this week, yesterday, to discuss the progress of our research.

One research problem we ran into was not being able to find enough resources for single vs. multiplayer game design. But since there are many other aspects of game design, it wasn't hard to think of other aspects to research.

Week 9

This week a group of graduates from the ITCD program came to talk to us. Actually when most of them graduated it wasn't ITCD, and one was from the master's program, MSIT I think is what it's called. Even though none of them held positions that I'm particularly interested in, I still found their advice to be very useful.

One piece of advice they gave was to make an effort to learn as much as you can in your classes. In my classes this semester, I've only been doing just enough to get good grades. I'm not exactly sure how to go about learning more, maybe if I try and apply the concepts to the real world. I do find that I sometimes space out during class, and when I tune back in I've missed so much that I get lost. I'll start sitting closer to the front and find a way to keep my energy up to avoid this. They also advised us to network. Some of the graduates mentioned that they received most of their jobs because someone referred them, or put in a good word.

We also had a chance to ask the panel some questions. One question that was asked was, which class was the most useful in preparing for their career. All of them said the Instructional Design class, which I've never heard of before. I hope they still offer it here, because it seems they learned in that class that they could apply to their careers now.

Week 8

This week in class the career center coordinator came and talked to us about the career center and the resources they provide. One of the things that caught my attention was the career fair they hold in the Spring. They also provide different "quizzes" that would determine a good career path for you, or help you decide what's important to you. I also learned that there are a lot of different factors when choosing a career. The most important one is choosing a career that interests you. Others would be location and work hours. The coordinator and Dr. Tao also went over planning a career. I was confused in the beginning of class as to what "planning" a career was. But now I think it's choosing a career, and planning out the steps to get you there.

What are the specific actions you can do between now and the time you graduate to enhance your career opportunity?
One thing would be to get an internship and some real world experience in my career of choice, which is software engineering or video game programming. Another is networking, with my classmates and maybe some professionals already in the industry (although I haven't figured out how I would do that yet). Another is doing side projects on my own to improve my programming knowledge and skills. I'm actually working on a side project right now, an asteroids game clone. I'm programming it with C++ and SFML(a media library for C++).

Week 7

For class on week 7, Dr. Tao lectured about how to run effective meetings. To have a meeting be effective we need an agenda before the meeting starts, someone taking minutes and a moderator to make sure everyone stays on topic. I'd never though about any of these things, but I'm glad he went over it so now we won't be wasting any time in meetings.

He also put us in groups based on our major and career interests. I put my capstone/career interests as game programming, so I was put in a group that were also interested in developing games. Then he told us that in our groups we would be researching the technology of our choice. I'm glad we were put into groups based on similar career interests/major because it was easy coming up with technologies everyone was interested in. I think we came up with a lot of great topic ideas and am looking forward to research any one of them.

We also had to create a SMART goal for our degree plan. I had a pretty hard time making it as long as the minimum requirement, but here's my SMART goal.

I want to finish all my required classes, and learn as much as I can in those classes, by the end of Spring 2012 and graduate with a 3.5 GPA or higher. I also want to take one class outside of my major that interests me. I want to gain efficient programming and communication skills from my classes that will make me stand out when applying for a job as a software engineer or as a video game programmer after I graduate. For my capstone, I want to produce a game that allows me to explore and understand the process of both software development and game development, display my programming skills, and possibly implement some form of artificial intelligence.

Post for class last Thursday, September 30th

Last week, Eric Tao went over effective project management. Some key points to making a project successful is communication between group members, good documentation and understanding the goal of the customer. The three features of a project are time, features and cost. To better one of those features, meaning decreasing time, better quality of features or lowering cost, you have to sacrifice one of the others. Some things that could lead to a failed project are no communication, no motivation, poorly defined goals, lack of resources, managing workload and personality conflicts.

Pat Watson then gave a little spiel of the program he's in charge of, Digital animation and 3D modeling. The majority of his presentation was a demo reel of student work, which was really impressive. If I were a freshmen still deciding on a major, I would've probably picked that then and there. I don't think I have enough creativity to go far with 3D modeling and animation anyways...

Dr. Tao also went over what SMART goals were. SMART stands for specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time-framed goals. I can see why a goal needs all these things to be an effective one. One example he used is a common new years goal I set for myself, to be healthier. That is very vague, and has no specific time frame. If I were to say, I want to eat at least one fruit and vegetable everyday for a month, that would be a smart goal. If that goal would actually change my eating habits after a month is another story though....

CD ILP, Capstone planning and our college experience

This post is actually originally written on September 30th, but is for last Thursday, September 23rd. I'm a little behind, but since I take notes every class I'm always able to catch up on my blog posts. And for the sake of keeping this blog organized, I changed the post date.

Kevin Cahill came into our class to discuss the CD ILP. He stated that next fall the CD ILP is going to change dramatically, and that they'll be adding multiple 2 unit courses, some of which would be intro courses that teach skills students should have when taking courses that are currently offered. I considered minoring in CD, but decided that it might set me back a semester in finishing my degree. So I decided to think about taking just a few courses to broaden my knowledge. He also advised us to not take our upper division service learning and the ethics class in the same semester, so I plan to take my upper division service learning next semester.

Dr. Tao then talked a little bit about capstone again. He said it should be somewhat of a stretch from our usual course work, and it should be challenging. He also said the best capstone ideas are the ones the students come up with themselves. I'm still unsure of what I should do for my capstone. He then talked about his college experience, and what we should learn from our college experience. The one thing that stood out to me was when he was talking about building communication skills. When I hear communication skills, I think of public speaking, and speaking infront of a class. The kind of communication skills he was talking about was more of understanding people, where they come from and their point of view. This kind of skill would come in handy working with people who are different than you. Sometimes different personalities clash, but if you always try to understand their point of view, personality clashing will become rare.