#kateintech

[kateintech]

A year later...

Wow it's been over a year since my last post! I've made a promise to myself that I'll never let it go that long again. A lot has happened in the last year...I finished my second year of university and am currently three months in to my industry year work placement as a Systems Engineer!  

I'm working for security company that really champion diversity. They encourage everyone from all backgrounds to apply and have done nothing but help me to develop my skills by signing up to courses and letting me shadow more experienced staff members. They have an internal work group for women in technology that I have joined and am looking forward to getting more involved with over the time I am there.  

Joining this group and being part of such a positive workplace has mad me want to step up my game. I'm going to start by reading up on the prominent women that made a difference in STEM fields so that I have more people to look up to and be inspired by. I'll share my research each month and hope that this inspires you too.  

[kateintech]

Placement Hunt Plan

Next month I’ll be going into the second year of my degree (can’t come fast enough) and one of my top priorities is finding a work placement for third year. 

I’m feeling pretty good about it at the minute and the plan is to apply for large companies first like:

Google Facebook Microsoft IBM

Warner Bros is also in my top first picks of companies as I have wanted to work in the film industry all my life. Being in IT that might now actually be a possibility!

After big name companies, instead of applying for medium size companies I’ll be trying for smaller businesses so that I can be involved with all of the processes. 

Either way wherever I end up I am so excited! Although I have around 10 years of work experience in customer service and events it’s not going to be the same as working in industry. I’m so excited to learn and build the foundations for my future. 

[kateintech]

I had never heard of binary before September. Now I am 1 of the 10 types of people that get this...

[kateintech]

Easter Holidays

Lectures are over for Easter which means I have three weeks off. After that it’s two weeks of teaching time followed by my end of year exams. I can’t believe how fast my first year has gone, and now I’m supposed to know enough to go into second year feeling all confident. All the lecturers are telling us that we’ll be walking taller in our second year but right now I don’t see it. Waiting for my epiphany to hit me!

[kateintech]

Coursework, essays and exams

There is so much going on at uni at the minute!

I’ve got deadlines approaching and exams to revise for.

First on my list is XHTML and CSS course work. We have to design a cookbook with an explanation page, homepage and two recipe pages. Then we have to make four different style sheets for them. Thanks to this piece of coursework I have realised that I am not as creative as I thought I was! So far I have two CSS designs and one of them doesn’t work properly. That’s what I’ll be spending my weekend trying to fix.

Then on top of revising for exams I have an essay on the European Convention of Cyber Crime to write, but before I write it, I need to finish reading it and find some case studies to talk about. At least this will involve using the law library which is so much nicer than the normal library. The law building is so much nicer than the technology building in general…you think they’d be as shiny as each other with technology being like the future?! But nope, us computer students get left behind in some of the oldest and coldest buildings on campus!

Speaking of essays, last term we had to write an essay on an ethical subject. I chose “Do celebrities have a right to privacy?” We got our results back last week and I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. I think it being 10 years since having to write an essay didn’t help. I’m more prepared this time and have my essay plan and outline drawn up and have started my background reading a few months in advance of the deadline.

Then finally I have two more phase tests in one week on computer networks and Haskell, then I have vivas for Programming in C and THEN I have my first year final exams. Fingers crossed!

So much to look forward to…