College & Career
Resume | Personal Statement
Read in New Window
Next fall I'll be going to Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo as a Computer Science major. From what I heard, this is not a major many girls go into so I guess that's a yay for me? So why a Computer Science major? Well for awhile now I've been rather fascinated by programming languages. I already know HTML and CSS (which aren't programming languages btw), and the basic concept of PHP. A lot of it makes sense to me after I work with it for awhile. I enjoy having a perfect written code that I wrote myself without having to copy and paste anything. It gives me a satisfying feeling, and any career you choose should give you a satisfying feeling right?
After college I'll work for a bit. I want to design games so I might work for a company or create my own game and go into buisness for myself. I also considered going to one of the Art Institutes to study 3D Art and Game Design and get my BA. Although I like to code, I've been enjoying art since I was about 5. Either way I'll be working. When I have enough money I might go for my Masters.
Resume
Objective:
To program and/or design games that are visually pleasing and mind stimulating.
Skills and Experience:
- I have worked with Photoshop for over a year.
- I am a quick learner.
- I designed my own sites as well as the site for my school.
- I have designed characters/items for a site called Peaworld.net
Work Experience:
- Youth in Action - Summer 2002
- Interned at BAVC; helped with the production of the Girl Trouble Interactive Journey.
- Completed Work Readiness Program at Arriba Juntos
Education:
- Mission High School - expected graduation: 6/2006
Personal Statement
How have you taken advantage of the educational opportunities you have had to prepare for college?
When pursuing my education there are many roads that I can take. I can take the wrong road and just do the minimal amount (or less) or, I can take the right road and try to do the maximum amount. I aim to reach the maximum. I sign up for whatever AP’s that is offered to my grade level (not including Language AP courses) as well as any honors. Since 9th grade I have been in honor classes. In the 10th grade I took AP Art History, the only AP offered to sophomores. Although AP Art History was hard I stuck with it. This year, my junior year, I am taking AP US History and AP Statistics. Although it hard to juggle two AP’s along with all my honor classes this year, I don’t transfer to the regulars classes for the reason I said before; I aim to read the maximum. In the summer of 2003 I signed up for EAOP’s (Early Academic Outreach Program) Pre-College Academy at UC Berkeley. This was a six week program that ran during the summer to help prepare students for their English and math courses in the following semester.
Tell us about a talent, experience, contribution or personal quality you will bring to the University of California.
Technology is steadily advance in our modern day world. As it advances, we should advance with it. One talent that I will bring to a University of California is my webmasters skills. I am fluent in the language of HTML and CSS. I’m also currently learning PHP and aim to learn how to use CGI scripts and MySQL databases. It is my goal to understand the basics of these three things before I graduate from high school. Recently I have bought my own domain and even offer free web hosting with advance features to people who are unable to purchase their own web space. Some think that technology has gone frighteningly far, however I believe that people should not live in ignorance of the technology around them and should be given the opportunity to learn how to use it to their advantage. I would be willing to help teach people who are willing to learn how to make a basic webpage. Learning the basics is the just first step. If someone wanted to take it a step farther they can reach the point where they’re employed to design sites for a business they might be working for a in the future.
Is there anything you would like us to know about you or your academic record that you have not had the opportunity to describe elsewhere in this application?
I was browsing through the forums on a site called Neopets one day when I came across one board where the poster was asking for help about a Photoshop. Interested, I clicked and proceeded to read the board. I had Photoshop installed on my computer but I never used it. Turns out the girl was actually asking for HTML help. Because I rarely ever find anyone who made web pages I asked her if she had a site. She did showed me the URL and I found out that she had a graphics site, which is a site that offers free premade layouts and graphics. After looking through her site I knew that I wanted to make one too. The next day I spent a total of seven hours making a layout and coding my new graphics site which I called Unfading Reality. It was hard at first because I had never used Photoshop before, so I looked up a few tutorials online and ended up with an okay looking layout. Coding was much harder. Although I had made plenty of sites in the past, I have never coded something to fit a layout such at this one. However in the end I was able to get it to work the way I wanted. I felt very proud afterwards, even though it wasn’t very good, and my choices of colors (orange and yellow) were quite ugly. After looking at a few other graphics I found that most of them offered four types of premade layouts: IFrame, Divider Layers, Tables, and Popup, named for the different types of coding and that most sites offered avatars and signs as well. I also discovered that many people who owned their own domain names and webspace offered to host other people under a subdomain. Excited, I worked harder at my site to meet the requirements needed to get hosted. In the past I had always used freehosts like Angelfire and Geocities, who offered very basic things. However if I got hosted under a private domain I would be able to access more advance features, not to mention a shorter URL. When I finally got hosted at Crescent-Dreams I was extremely pleased. However I didn’t know how to use the FTP account that was given me, but after chatting a bit with the owner, I found that uploading files through FTP was much easier then a filemanager, which was what freehosts gave. I felt that I had to live up to my subdomain and worked even harder at my site and thrived to improve not only in webdesign but graphic design as well. After a few months I felt that I wanted my own domain, and then my possibilities would be almost limitless. I asked my sister to help me order and pay for it because she had a Paypal account. Within a few minutes my account was set up and I had 4 gigabytes of webspace all to myself under the domain Northenrlite.net. After going through all this I realized just how much I love running my graphics site. It’s a combination of art and HTML. Two things I love to do. In less then a year my webmaster’s skills have improved dramatically. I was also a newbie at using Photoshop, but now I’m better then some people who have been doing it for years. I hope one day to use such talents to get a job and make living. But first I hope to learn the things that I can get from an online tutorial. And for that I would be more then willing to sign up for any classes in this field when I enter college.
