My name is Wayne Simmons no relation to the more famous Bruce Wayne and I am a student at The City College of New York and a part-time retail employee. Before CCNY I attended Clara Barton High School. I am a freshman at The City College of New York in my second semester with the intended major of computer science. During my high school career, I’ve had multiple jobs that included customer service, fast food, and retail and I currently work in a flagship retail store for a company that sells technology like phones, laptops, headphones, and more. I can program in many languages such as CSS, HTML, Java, and Javascript. I am hard-working, devoted, a problem solver, a good communicator and collaborator, and dependable.

In the first assignment, resume and cover letter, I learned how to match keywords from a job posting into my resume. Before this assignment, my resume would often just be a list of the things I’ve accomplished and places I’ve worked and I would only barely change it for each job. Now that I have learned more about how hiring managers may look and skim through my resume, I know your resume needs to stand out by using the keywords listed in the job posting in your resume. Taking into consideration the audience and purpose of the resume, this approach becomes even more crucial. This has also carried over into my first cover letter. Since I learned that it is important to match keywords into my cover letter and I’ve already done it in my resume, it made writing the cover letter much easier along with the outline that we learned in class. I had never written a cover letter before, and with the outline given, I felt proud and accomplished after finishing the writing of my first one.

The second assignment was a lab report based on a simple experiment of rolling dice. While I had done experiments in the past and had to write about them this one was different. Due to the nature of the experiment being so simple, I had put more effort into the other aspects of the lab report, including reading and analyzing my research. This meant that after recording the results of my rolling a pair of dice I had more effort put into the making of the graphs and charts that portrayed my results. I learned how to best capture and display my results within my lab report and describe my results. I also learned organizational skills in terms of laying out my lab report in an easy-to-follow format. I also learned the fundamentals of synthesizing the information I had gathered and learned in a simple way that a reader could understand. I believe that I did a good job in conducting the experiment and recording accurate data. I followed the methods that I had planned out and also chose a sample size of 108, which is a multiple of 36, to ensure that my results were evenly distributed and more accurate. However, I think that I could have improved my experiment by controlling the variables that may have affected the results. For example, the type and quality of dice used could have affected the outcome, as well as how the dice were rolled. In the future, I would try to use the same type and quality of dice for all rolls and roll them the same way to eliminate any possible biases. Furthermore, I also learned the importance of having a large sample size to ensure accuracy in results. A larger sample size can eliminate any bias and provide a more accurate representation of the probability distribution. This knowledge can be useful in various fields, including statistics, probability, and data analysis. In my career being able to write a good report on any experiments conducted is important because I need to be able to get my research out to the academic community. Whether I’m conducting research for a university or cooperation having the basic skill and outline of a lab report and what it entails will help me in the real world.

I have taken away a variety of useful skills and lessons from the making of my group proposal. Being able to collaborate effectively with team members to develop ideas that benefit my company or other companies is crucial in my career. When presenting a pitch to a group of people, I need to make them want to choose our idea or fund our project. The skills I gained for being able to do something include time management skills. Being able to meet a deadline to come up with a document that explains in detail what my project entails and all the logistics surrounding it and a presentation to pitch the idea is important because in my career it is likely I would have similar deadlines that will be given to me or a team. Another skill gained from this experience is the ability to accurately find the scope of costs for a project. I had to do tremendous amounts of research into the costs of construction for different buildings and building sizes and then also look up city and state laws for constructing buildings in NYC. In addition, I had to research the costs of labor and amenities in the student center as well. In my career being able to accurately come up with the costs of a project is important so that the people I’m proposing too have a realistic idea of the costs and won’t blackout in case I miss calculated. In addition, the skill of organization of these ideas in an easily understandable and presentable manner is a skill that was sharpened through this project. This skill is important because whoever I’m presenting my proposal to needs to be able to clearly understand what they would undertake so that their decision to approve or fund a project isn’t hindered by their confusion. One Last skill I had gained was the ability to use a new technology which was called rhino 3D which helped me to make my floor plans to have a visual representation of our student center.  

My final assignment was the Technical description which I thought was a very thought-provoking project. The drafting proccess required me to dig deep and find out way more information about a topic than anyone would know so that I could understand it well and explain it simply. The topic that I chose was how quantum computers can break the encryption of data. This project developed my ability to teach people complex concepts as simply as I can. It also helped me expand my research and comprehension skills. I had to understand a lot of complex things which meant I had to find new ways of thinking of and interpreting the world. As a computer scientist, there will be many instances where I will have to explain technical things to different audiences and this technical description was an amazing first start to that journey. There are a few instances where I could have made things a bit simpler or left out certain parts to simplify the project. For example, in the section where I do the math, I could’ve tried simplifying the math or leaving it out and just presenting a simpler version in plain English instead of showing my actual math and equations. Though I would have to rethink how I presented the information since I relied on math to explain what quantum computers are. But that’s the thing, this project made me think hard during it and is still causing me to rethink choices afterward that will help me improve in the future.

My experiences throughout the semester have provided me with a variety of useful skills and lessons. Through the assignments, I have learned the importance of tailoring my resume and cover letter to a job posting, accurately conducting and reporting experimental data, making proposals and presentations, and explaining complex concepts in a technical description. These skills are not only important for academic success but are also applicable in the real world, especially in my intended major computer science. The knowledge and skills I have gained will be valuable assets in my future endeavors and will undoubtedly aid in achieving my career goals.