I started my journey at USC as an electrical engineering major. On my first day of classes as a college student, I was able to go straight into my Electrical Engineering courses. It was pretty great because I wasn’t just taking general education and math courses. One of my electrical engineering classes was EE 105 (Introduction to Electrical Engineering). In this course I was able to get great exposure many of the topics I would be studying at USC. Although I loved all the information being taught and I was really interested in the topics discussed in class I was looking for a little more. My second Electrical Engineering course was EE 150 (Engineering Computational Methods) which was a class that introduced students to programming in C++ and MATLAB. This was my first time ever programming so it was a little difficult for me at first but soon began to love programming. The only issue was Electrical Engineering is hardware based so I wouldn’t get to do a lot of programming throughout my academic career. I loved the hardware aspect but wanted to add a stronger software component.   Lucky for me, Viterbi offers a degree Computer Engineering Computer Science. This program provides an equal balance of software and hardware courses which is exactly what I was looking for. I met with my advisor, talked it out with him, and made the switch. Viterbi makes it really easy for students switch degree programs within the school so I was glad to hear that I was still on track to graduate in four years.

In my CSCI 103 class

In my CSCI 103 class

Although I have only been in the program for two weeks, I know in my heart I made the right choice. Even in my intro course I am learning so much. I am taking CS 103 Introduction to programming, which is an awesome course teaching you the essential skills of programming in C/C++. The professors are all great and are completely aware of the range of skills (or the lack thereof) that entering students have. This class is great because there are so many TA’s (teaching assistants) and CP’s (course producers) in addition to the professors’ office hours. I am also taking EE 109 (Introduction to Embedded Systems). This is my favorite class because it demonstrates how to marry hardware with software, which is just what I was looking for.

In my EE 109 clss

In my EE 109 class

I’m so pumped for this semester. All my classes are really interesting and I feel fully engaged. I am so excited to be learning some new things, and I am really glad I switched my major.   [author title=”Author” author_id=””] href="#" data-color-override="false" data-hover-color-override="false" data-hover-text-color-override="#fff">Button Text

Josue

Josue

Computer Science and Engineering, Class of 2017, Learn more on his profile here!