My Journey to a B.S. in Computer Science
After several grueling years at a local community college, followed by two strong years at California State University, Bakersfield, I’ve finally graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science. This marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life outside of academics. I can finally begin my career doing what I love most: creating software and solving bugs.
Of course, I was already doing those things before graduating, but now I can finally get paid to do them.
I want to talk a little about my journey and what it took to get to where I am today.
To start off, I’d like to mention that I’m leaving out a lot of details in the interest of not boring the reader, since much of my time spent in school was fairly mundane. That being said, during my senior year of high school, I was much more focused on life outside of academics. Because of that, I ended up attending Bakersfield College.
The college itself wasn’t bad by any means, just a bit far away at about a 40-minute drive. I spent around four years attending BC, and a lot of that was due to the fact that I wasn’t receiving the academic guidance many of my peers had access to. I was completely lost when it came to signing up for classes.
For example, during my very first registration period, I accidentally signed up for only prerequisite and general education classes instead of the actual courses required for my major. This became a major issue because the Computer Science program required a strict sequence of classes. I needed to take Class A before Class B, and so on. By the time I had finally completed all my prerequisites, I was only beginning the four core classes required to progress in the major, which themselves took several more semesters to complete.
That’s ultimately why I spent nearly double the amount of time at BC than I originally expected.
As for my grades, I was probably a C student at best during those years. Like I mentioned earlier, I simply wasn’t focused on academics at the time. My priorities were elsewhere. Eventually, though, that changed.
After finishing at Bakersfield College, I took a much-needed mental health break to work on myself and reevaluate where I wanted my life to go. I finally returned to school in the Fall 2024 semester, and that’s when everything changed.
For the first time, I truly began focusing on my academic career. I made it a goal not to earn lower than a B in any of my classes. That mindset reignited the love I once had for learning and studying.
At California State University, Bakersfield, I had the honor of being taught by some incredible professors. I would name them all, but honestly, there are too many to list. They showed me that it didn’t matter how difficult a class was. With enough effort, discipline, and motivation, anything was possible.
During my senior year, I really doubled down and focused on delivering a strong senior project. This project was the culmination of two semesters of hard work.
The project was a check-in system for our school’s esports lab. I worked across all three major areas of development: the backend, frontend, and database systems. Our team scored very well on the project, and I passed both senior project classes with an A. I can confidently say I’m proud of the result.
Overall, this journey took me to many places and introduced me to a lot of great people, including friends like Andrew, Eric, Oscar, and many others. I graduated not only with a degree, but also with real experience working on a team, handling late-night bugs that needed to be fixed before the next class period, and building a solid understanding of how computers and software systems truly work.
If I could leave one quote from this experience, it would be:
"Don't give up, because if you give up, then you'll never win, and if you win, then you never gave up."