My experience at Brown has been challenging and rewarding, especially re-adjusting to academic life, as I had been working as a teacher since I graduated from college. I wondered if I would feel like an outsider since I wasn’t a CS major in college, but this certainly is not the case. The CS department at Brown has a supportive and welcoming environment, and they appreciate an interdisciplinary and diverse perspective. Between activities and talks, there are a variety of ways to immerse yourself in this field. Using the CS departmental resources has helped me explore what field of CS I want to pursue, which is not something I knew prior to starting my master’s degree.

I found a passion for computer science later in life and wanted to be able to dive deeper into the field. I didn’t know what computer science was until college. As a Mathematics major, I was required to take an introduction to Computer Science course. I quickly found that the things that drew me to mathematics were also what made computer science so interesting. I loved solving problems and applying algorithmic thinking. I can still remember how excited I was to run my first program and see that the code I wrote actually did something. I took a couple more CS classes, but it wasn’t until I began my career teaching high school math and computer science that I realized how much there was that I wanted to learn and how interesting I found the various fields within this subject. Throughout those years, my desire to deepen my understanding of computer science grew. Now that I am entering my second year of the master’s program, I couldn’t be happier with the decision I made to advance my learning here at Brown.

I hope to use my master’s in Computer Science to become a software engineer. Thanks to the CS department’s Industry Partners Program, I was able to utilize many resources here on campus to help me find a summer internship between my first and second years. Having that industry experience was not only enjoyable, but it also gave me insight into the kind of engineering I want to pursue in my career. As I move into industry, though, I will always be passionate about pushing forward initiatives to help young students connect to computer science. I hope to be able to join a company that has ties with its community and hosts events to expose a wide variety of students to computer science.