Today was the Alumni Symposium at CofC. We had alumni from the computer science department come in and talk to the current students. Each one of them is given 3 minutes to talk about whatever they want to talk about, followed by Q&A from the current students to ask anything they want. The theme for this years event seemed to stem from "personal projects = jobs". Most of the speakers talked about how they got into the position they are now by having personal side projects that they worked on before they started working, and projects that they keep up with even while they have a full time job. The advice only seemed to have one warning, and that was to make sure that if you work on the project outside of work that it does not break the contract. This I think is really good advice, and one that will probably follow me for the rest of my career seeing as how I love working with open source.
Speaking of open source, lately I have been working with Obsidian to get it ready for POSSCON. To understand the code I have been dissecting different parts by changing things here and there to see the changes and understand the control flow of the program. One of the things I'm currently looking into is making the source code IDE independent, and coming up with the tutorials on how to make it work on most of the platforms. That should be an interesting task for me, playing around with ant and writing technical documentation will be a learning experience.
Going back to what I could be doing in the future, I have given a lot of thought into what I want to do as a career path, but I haven't finally decided on anything yet. The main issue that I face is do I want to switch careers halfway down the line, or do I just want to stick to one track? The two tracks that I'm torn between are teaching and software engineering. I love the idea of teaching the next generation, but I feel that without some real world experience (10 years as a software developer or so) that I might not be able to impart extra wisdom to the class (the extra wisdom being non-academic advice). So the way I'm thinking about my future right now is going to work writing software for a few years, and eventually while I work teach on the side. Eventually I would transition from that dual job title and go fully into teaching, the only problem with this is the advice that I have been getting from people. Most of the academics and non-academics that I talk to suggest that I should go straight into teaching and not bother with going into the non-academic sector because of the money. Apparently if I go into the private sector I will get used to a lifestyle, and not want to return to the academia world. I do not know how true this is, but enough people have warned me about it to start putting serious doubts in my head about doing the dual career paths.
Whatever path I decide to take, I still think it would be cool to make the one idea I have had for a while and bring it into fruition. I have always wanted to make a company where the contracts we take on will pay for the bills, while the other half of the company will be a R&D/Open source department. Anyone in the company can take a day a week to work on an open source project (or create one) and put it out there for other people to use. I figure this way the open source software we do use will be improved with the features the company wants, and if people see the work that our workers are capable of they will pay for our services. The other part of the company is the student side. I would love to be able to have students on the team, working on both sides of the company, as well as getting real world experience along the academic experience they are receiving. This is something I really need to put a lot of thought into before my undergrad finishes up, that way I have a clear idea of what I need to do moving forward.
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