Blog 3: Graduate School Applicaitons

So recently I’ve been looking into getting into a graduate school program at Colorado State University (CSU), a state college near me. This has been an interesting experience to me, as my previous collegiate experience at Oklahoma State University (OSU, go pokes!), my application was not a very difficult or intentional process. They were my local state college at the time, I had a goodish~okayish GPA from highschool, and didn’t have to write anything thoughtful for getting in, like a statement of purpose, or explaining anything I’d done or anything I’d like to do.

My Background

My first college class I took when I was 12, as part of my high school experience at Colorado Early Colleges Fort Collins. I took concurrent enrollment all throughout my 2.5 years at CECFC and I think this built the foundation for me really not appreciating the privilege that is college and college courses.

This became apparent to me filling out my grad school application and looking over my transcript, which I don’t feel great about. Reader, I want you to understand that school comes to me easy. This is something that actually brings up a lot of feelings of grief. See, in this process I’ve been looking at my old transcripts, and I know I only put in 10%-15% effort, landing between a 2.7 and 3.4 GPA each semster. I used my privilege of the ease that school comes to me to simply watch more youtube, and play more video games. Homework got done on sunday afternoons if it got done at all, and exam and participation grades were the foundation that kept me from failing all my classes. Perks of being in university as a teenager?

I had thought at the time I was putting in a lot of effort (I was studying for the first time in my life). Especially after getting humbled in my first college exam, where I got a 43% of my first engineering chem exam, thank god for grade forgiveness policies. But, after holding down my first professional full time job, I can confidently say I was 10% effort out of what I was capable of.

Part of my interest in actually pursuing grad school comes from the fact that I have the funding to go, but realistically I want to go to college for 3 things:

• Prove to myself I can have killer grades in difficult courses and really feel myself stretch my potential
• Increase my earning potential as a software engineer having more credentials when job searching
• Having the credentials to teach when I eventually burn out of software forever and scorn tech’s name

Being fair to my younger self

As a point of self documentation I wanted to be a little more balanced as I can tell I’ve been dogging on myself in the previous section. So, to give credit where it is due to a younger Caleb, here’s a quick list of why maybe I didn’t apply myself the best, in no particular order.

• I was working 10-15 hours a week for my first 3 years in very brain consuming work, and though it would have been acceptable or even encouraged for me to not do too much of value and just do my homework, I don’t work like that :/
• I had a long distance girlfriend, now wife of 4.5 years, who needed a lot of support when she was going through some things in my younger years. Things are way better now, but I spent most of my spare time with her and stayed up far too late far too often just to make sure she would be okay.
• I was 15-19 for the core of my time at university, so obvious maturity diff
• I had a lot of people around me in my engineering program retale the same story of GPAs not mattering after college and c’s get degrees etc etc, once you land your first job.
• I was in an engineering program that was not easy. I probably underestimate how hard it actually was.
• I started college in 2017, and the cultural awareness of what social media algorythms were taking from us, or how easy it was to fall into bad habbits hadn’t been built yet, and I was in the generation it was unleashed on.

Teaching

I really love helping others learn. Every time I get to explain something, every time I help someone with homework or whatever and they finally get it, I cherish those moments. I’ve always had a heart for people and teaching, and to be honest if it was not for the money problems I probably would teach. I’ve always felt since my freshman year I’d love to teach math or comp sci to like middle schoolers and sort of prove to people that they are smarter than they think they are, maybe they just need a concept explained a little differently. Especially to instill academic confidence in that tween age, I think that would be special to me. Sadly, you mostly need a grad degree to teach a lot of places (not really middle schools but like if I wanted to run an into to compsci class at a university) so here I am, likely pursuing higher education.

Conclusion

My experience working on my grad school apps has been a really cool opperunity to introspect! I appreciate the thoughtful questions, and I appreciate that CSU is willing to take on students with a sub 3.0 GPA is they have enough other supporting evidence of success. Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and believed in me during my academic and professional career, especially looking at you EP, and I hope you, reader, enjoyed this post.

Thank you for letting me yap, and until next sporadic post,

Hooligan

P.S.

For fun, here’s a couple drafts of my statement of purpose! A lot of the inspiration from this post came from drafting my SOP and GPA statement; these are by no means complete and please PLEASE do not try and copy them to use for your applications, these are yet to be reviewed by a single soul.

SOP Draft 1

I have a love for teaching others. It’s something that I loved to do when classmates would give me the chance as a student, and something that I love to do to help friends, younger siblings, anyone who would give me the opportunity and the trust to be part of their learning journey. That special moment when someone who’s been frustrated by something finally gets it, and they trust themselves to be able to learn a little bit more, that moment I love.

SOP Draft 2

Teaching is the north start that grad school is on a path towards. I’ve been working in industry now for about 4 years, and something I’ve learned is that I don’t want to be a software engineer forever. So for now, my goals are to get my masters, to continue chasing higher salaries, to soft retire into a teaching position when I’m in a comfortable financial position to do so, and getting my masters will be a requirement when I get there, so I would like to use this time while I still really appreciate my college experience and have a tuition reimbursement program to get that done. In addition, I feel I did not apply myself very well during undergrad and working professionally has really taught me the dedication that I believe could have raised me from the student I was into a 4.0 student, and I’d like to take this opportunity to achieve that which I always wanted in undergrad but was never willing to put in the effort to get. I want to teach either introductory computer science in university, or do some introductory teaching for middle school aged kids of computer science or math. I am interested in pursuing courses in the Software Engineering and Information Assurance section more specifically, as I’d like to ensure my masters will push me forward in my career, but I have no interest in AI or Big data systems as an educational pursuit. I want to pursue my education at CSU as I have moved from Oklahoma after living there for 8 years and I want to deeply entrench myself in my community here in Fort Collins Colorado, as I had believed I would be living in Oklahoma termporarily, and have learned that to lose nothing when you move is to have gained nothing while you lived there. I am a Colorado native and want to stay here.

GPA Statement

When I first started taking college level courses in highschool through concurrent enrollment I was 12 years old. I did well in my concurrent enrollment and didn’t take university as seriously as I should have and focused on other things, and simply did not apply myself beyond being an information sponge throughout college, until the end where I told myself that my GPA didn’t matter that much, as I only needed my degree to get my job. After being in the workforce as a software engineer for over 4 years now, I know how much of a privilege college is and how I took it for granted, and took success for granted. I plan to apply myself in my future classes like I apply myself at work, and turn out good quality work on time consistently, and to have a better GPA in grad school than I ever did in undergrad. I believe that with my time spend in the professional field I will have the time management skills, comfort with code, and dedication to be successful in your graduate program.