Home Page | Capstone Reactions | About Me
Computer Science culture, especially within College / University, has a love affair with hackathons. I always had the impression that personal projects could only really be completed during theose coffee-crazed marathon coding sessions, and found it horribly disappointing when I couldn't finish a project. Inevitably, something would go wrong or my brain would cease to function, and I would leave empty-handed, heavy-hearted, and overall less confident than when I entered. Because of that, I was hesitant about the capstone process. I felt like the only thing I would get out of it was a deep sense of inadequacy. I was incredibly wrong.
By going through the capstone process, I found a format for personal projects that I enjoy infinitely more. I prefer longer projects where I get to iterate over my design, not because of sheer desperation, but from an interest to explore the problem from a different angle. I prefer undergoing projects where I have the time to make mistakes and to learn from them, rather than become harried by the onslaught of the clock. By going through a rigorous yet open-ended project, I learned that I prefer working in short bursts over a long period of time. Having the time built in to take a break, to take my mind off of things to look at them in a new angle, works for me. It may not be the most ideal working style nor the most common, but it was the style that enabled me to get through the capstone process.
Capstones are largely self-motivated, I came to realize. We all start with amazing ideas. With fire in our eyes, we would talk animatedly about our projects, excited about the possiblity of what they could achieve. However, it was all too easy to procrastinate. The ideas that we once found exciting became extremely daunting. Fighting against that trepidation was extremely hard for me. It was actually kind of ironic. In wanting to create a capstone that I was proud of, I pushed off working on it so that I could push off the impending disappointment looming in the distance. I found that the way to fight stagnation was to simplify things into smaller steps. Sometimes you just need to take a few days off in order to see the picture. Whereas I once saw that as a weakness, I now see that as a strength. Simplifying things into more managable tasks is a skill, and the capstone certainly exercised it.
The capstone made me feel more confident in my coding skills. I don't think I'll ever feel like an experienced coder, but that's not a bad thing. Now, I'm even more eager to spend more time in the trenches, working with new technologies that I find to be exciting.