Outside Interests Can Help Your Computer Science Career

Outside Interests Can Help Your Computer Science Career

This is something that I learned in one of my introduction Computer Science classes, and something that I've especially seen throughout my schooling career. Many classes such as my Senior Project and Android development class allow students to create ideas and implement them. Here's some examples:

1. ARora (Augmented Reality Optical Assistant): This is part of my Senior Project. One of our team members, Taylor, loves reading old classic books. The challenge is that they're written in Old English, and he constantly has to look up words in the dictionary. So we're developing an application that allows you to view the book through your phone's camera, and tap on the word on your phone's screen to bring up the dictionary definition.

Example of ARora

2. ARiT (Augmented Reality Image Translator): Also part of my Senior Project. Matt, loves learning languages. In fact he got a BA degree in Arabic Studies. He remembered how hard it was when learning the language to carry a dictionary everywhere he went, and how hard it was to learn everything that was around him. This app allows a user to point their phone at an object, tap on the phone screen, and the app will tell the user what the object is in their chosen language.

3. Hiking App: One of the ideas for my Senior Project was to create a hiking app that showed trails, and would allow you to navigate without cell reception. We have some avid hikers and lovers of the outdoors in my group.

4. Restaurant Manager: A classmate of mine worked at a restaurant part-time, trying to pay their way through college. They came up with a cool software idea that would help staff know what tables were filled and how close to capacity the restaurant was.

5. Music: I love music. It seems that I'm drawn to project that incorporate music. I've created a Music-Based Authentication System, a Midi Musical Search Engine, and I've written various songs for games I've written for class.

Here's the latest song that I've written for JengaAR: