The courses at JMU were very helpful to me in learning the arts of computer science. Before JMU, I went to Lord Fairfax Community College, LFCC, and took most of my basic programming courses there. At LFCC, they only teach you the basics of programming and when I came to JMU, I was in way over my head. Since I’m a fast learner I picked up on the languages fast and was able to keep up with the JMU students, but there were times when I first started that I was really lost. I recommend taking the introduction to programming classes at LFCC, because they do teach you the basics, but if you took the introduction courses somewhere else, retake them at JMU, I think that would have been very helpful to me instead of being lost and basically starting my scratch, myself.

I also had a lot of experience in other workplaces before I obtained the internship at SusQtech, which helped a lot because I was already familiar with web design and what web applications were capable of. If you are offered an internship, you should take it, if you aren’t offered one, apply for some. If you can’t get an internship, dabble in different technologies a little bit in your free time. Make sure that you get familiar with different languages and environments to broaden your horizons and decide what you like the most. This will also help you decide whether or not it is what you really want to do as a career. Experience will help you when you are out in the real world, it will help distinguish you above other potential employees and maybe even be the deciding factor in the end when they choose an employee. Also, if you obtain an internship and you do a good job, the company will probably want you to work for them in the future, and it’s always good to have something waiting for you when you are done.