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.

Instructor Presentations and Advisors

Last Thursday, September 16th, we had multiple instructors come and talk to us about their research and programs they teach. The first presenter was Ben Erlandson. He showed us different projects he worked on at Arizona State University. Most of them were virtual worlds that would teach us more about the environment and how we effect it. In the "Cloverdale" project, students were "hired" to help the community become more environmentally friendly. The "Postropolis" project was designed to teach users how large or small their carbon footprint was based on which mode of transportation they took. Ben is also working on re-doing "Cloverdale" in a program I forgot the name of, but it looks much better than the first version.

Then Dr. Tao explained to us that we would need to select an academic advisor to look over our ILPs. He showed us an excel sheet we could use to determine who would be our advisor. For my first choice of an advisor, I would choose Professor Young-jun Byun because I want to enter the software development field and he's the primary advisor for that program. I've also been in a few of his classes and he seems very knowledgeable. My second choice would be Kate Lockwood. I've never been in any of her classes before, but I met her last semester because she was the computer science club advisor. I've never been in her class before, but if I was, I'm sure this choice would have been very hard. I would actually be happy with either of those advisors.
Dr. Tao also mentioned we would have to have to choose a capstone advisor. For my capstone, I wanted to do something to help me get a job programming video games, so probably programming a game. But I also want the game to display my skills in software engineering, so I have something to show if I don't get a job programming games. I'm not sure which advisor I want for my capstone yet, but when I have a better idea of what my capstone is I'm sure the decision will be easier.

Dr. Tao then talked about his experiences in the real world. I was impressed by the fact that he started his own company with one of his colleagues. Then he shared his story of when he had to choose between working with machines that detected cancer and becoming a teacher with lower pay. At first, I was shocked that he chose becoming a teacher with lower pay. But then he explained that those machines were kept in the basement, and seeing the doctors smoke for their breaks, and then I understood why he chose becoming a teacher. Then I started to think about what I would have chose if I was in his shoes, or if I had the choice between a career that pays more but isn't interesting to me and a career that I loved but less pay, which one would I choose? At this point, I honestly don't know.

Then Kate Lockwood came in to talk about her research and the Information Systems program for CSIT. Like many I'm sure, I didn't know what information systems were. Kate explained it through a three circle venn diagram The three circles were labeled business, people and technology. The middle piece where they all met was information systems. The program seemed interesting, just not for me. She also mentioned that her research was in artificial intelligence. I kinda wanted to hear more about her research because I'm doing a paper on artificial intelligence in video games (which is a little different than artificial intelligence) for the writing component of CST 300.

CSIT ILP, Web Design and Capstone

Last Thursday's class started out with a presentation on CSIT's ILP. An ILP is an individual learning plan, kind of like a 2 year plan where you plan out which classes you take. We have to fill it out and meet with Tammy and a staff advisor to get it checked out in the next couple of weeks. I started filling it out, and I hope I'm still able to graduate in Spring 2012. I'm planning on taking a lot of software design classes, and internet programming and intro to computer networks. I'm taking those two classes because I feel like it will give me a wider variety of skills. Sathya also mentioned graduate school, and I'm glad I took calculus 1 and calculus 2 so I have the option of getting my masters. It's definitely something I want to pursue, but I'm not sure if I can do it right out of college.

Kevin Cahill also came to talk to our class. He's in charge of the web design classes in the school of ITCD and also teaches the ethics course, CST 373. He showed us pictures of chairs and houses. The single foot chair that was invented in the 50s was crazy! I didn't realize what timeless design was until seeing that picture. He talked a little bit about thewildernessdowntown.com , the new site that uses HTML5. My sister showed it to me the other day and it's awesome! It really gets you pumped for the future and HTML 5.

Then professor Bude Su came to talk to us about the Human Interface class and the capstone class. She started out with a competition to guessing what her first language was. I had a few guesses but would have never guessed Mongolian! Then she started talking about our capstone projects. Just the word capstone makes me scared! It seems like such a huge project. She said a few problems people run into is procrastination and taking on a project they aren't capable of. The second problem scares me because I want to make a video game for my capstone. I've never programmed a video game before, but I'm going to try my best and get enough knowledge to make one. I want to start my capstone next fall so I can graduate the spring after that, but who knows what'll happen between then and now.

For this week, we also had to look at study habits and time management websites. The study habits had useful tips on reading, or maybe I just found it useful because I'm not a very good textbook reader. It said to ask questions and try to get the main idea. When I read, I just try to get to the end of the reading assignment as soon as possible, just looking at my book gives me a headache. I'm going to try to follow the reading tips now. And for the time management tips... I'm not sure they came in handy for me. I don't have a lot of free time to manage, I either work have school or study during the week. On the weekends I do some homework on friday, no homework on saturday, and a lot of homework on sunday.

http://home.csumb.edu/t/tordacatrina/world/ActivityLog.pdf

Instructor Presentations and Student Profiles

Today in class we had three instructor presenters. I realized that I don't know much about the other emphasis's in the CSIT major, so I decided I should listen and learn about the other programs to make sure I made the right decision. The first professor, Sathya Narayanan, specializes in the Networking and Security emphasis. He started out with a discussion about computer science and it's definition. It doesn't really have a specific definition, but he used an interesting example of what the definition isn't. He said the study of astronomy is not the study of telescopes, so computer science is more than just the study of computers. After he explained the networking and security emphasis, it seemed interesting but just not for me. Then Professor Byun presented the software engineering emphasis. This is the emphasis I was interested in when I decided to change majors to CSIT. Professor Byun also mentioned something about being able to do a game for a capstone. Game development is my ultimate career goal, but since jobs are pretty hard to come by I feel like emphasizing in software engineering would be better for me. If they do start offering game development classes I would definitely take them. But if I could do a game for my capstone that would be awesome! And even if I don't end up in game development as my career, I would still do it on the side as a hobby. Then Professor Bobbi Long presented the visual design emphasis in the CD major. Programs like Photoshop and Illustrator always seemed so complicated to me, so I hadn't taken my Media Tools class requirement until this semester. We've only just started Illustrator, but I find it really fun. Not something I would go further in though. I was really impressed by the number of logos and other things Bobbi Long created. Overall I thought all the presentations were good.

We were also assigned to look at student portfolios this week. I looked at two, Jeremy Laskar's and Alfredo Martinez. The portfolios were websites that listed the courses they took or were going to take, and also described any major projects they did in them. I was impressed by Jeremy's, the layout reminded me of a Mario game or an old arcade game. He also took a mix of design and technical courses. Alfredo's was very nice too, it was easy to navigate around and find the classes he took. I like how both portfolios listed the major projects they worked on in that course.