Final Reflection (5/11/21)
With my second semester of the computer science senior seminar, and my undergraduate career, coming to a close, I would like to reflect on the experience that I had in the course and how it has been essential to my understanding of how lessons from computing fit into the larger world. An impactful piece of our seminar was the ethical discussions we had periodically throughout the semester. I found these extremely insightful because we were able to explore topics on current events and the ethical issues they pose that wouldn’t naturally be covered in course curriculums, but would be necessary for society to consider to maintain equity and morality. Furthermore, because classmates were able and willing to express disagreeing viewpoints, we were able to have enriching discussions that taught us various perspectives and considerations that we must have when making future decisions on the role technology can play in our lives.
The other major component of the seminar was my team’s engagement in the OpenMRS HFOSS community. It was profoundly difficult to get our feet wet in such a large open source project because of the complexities of the code base and its structure as well as the interactive technologies that it uses for its medical records database system. Nevertheless, since we were consistently faced with blockers and challenges, we also had the opportunity to be introduced to a lot of new technology and coding practices with the help and support of the OpenMRS community.
The experiences I had in this course helped to cultivate, in particular, my willingness to engage in the unfamiliar and the skill to adapt to a changing world. Every code and community interaction I had, I was faced with a new concept with minimal prior knowledge to supplement my understanding. I have struggled in the past in these situations because it is difficult to know where to start in order to get your bearings for an unfamiliar work environment such that you can become a helpful contributor. In OpenMRS, this process took months, but eventually I was able to begin to understand the interactions that community members have with each other to organize a large group project and I learned to understand smaller segments of the project that were more within my grasp. I found that asking the community for help was pivotal to this process. Having struggled with the unfamiliar and finding success in overcoming it, I feel that I am now much more willing to tackle a new unfamiliar circumstance with the understanding that it will not always be unfamiliar and that it is an opportunity to learn.
The discussions, on the other hand, developed my skill to adapt to a changing world. We discussed the entrance of new technologies and ethical problems into the world such as technological warfare and artificial intelligence, bioinformatics and facial recognition, and information collection and privacy. These topics are at the forefront of future and even recent applications of technology and require our due diligence to respond effectively to ethical concerns they pose. It is often the case that technology progresses faster than the policy to mitigate it and by understanding the ways in which we should check technology, I am better equipped to handle the dangers it imposes both on me and to other members of society.
The computer science senior seminar helped me to develop these skills which will continue to help my studies in the future. I am pursuing medical school, a field that is very unfamiliar to me. Given my experience in facing the unknown within computing, I know that the struggles you face early on in a new experience will eventually subside and I can be comfortable in knowing that to be an expert, I have to start as a beginner learning everything for the first time. The skill to adapt to a changing world will also compliment my efforts in the medical field as I will be watching for inequities within the medical field and policy responses that combat it.














