I took my first programming class my junior year of high school. It was a Visual Basic class with Mr. Blair. At one point in the class he told me that I would make a good technologist, specifically one who runs teams and is helping others. This had a profound impact on me (it's amazing the difference what is spoken over us at a young age can make). From there I continued to AP Computer Science and followed this vision out to Seattle for school. Because of Mr. Blair I knew I always wanted to be teaching and leading others in technology.

My two favorite classes in college were very different. The first was cloud computing, I took this elective my senior year and it rocked me. Mostly because of how cool it was! It was a hard class, but I loved learning the depth of the how the cloud actually works. The second, was my theology core requirement my junior year. This class went deep on the themes of scripture, comparing the "God of Creation" and "God of Empire". It rocked my faith. 

Both classes challenged me on how I looked at the world, but in both classes I feel like I pushed through to another level of growth and understanding. A great example of how Jesuit education seeks to expand the whole person.

My senior capstone project was building a web app for Kenworth Trucks' repair crew. It was so cool to finally apply computer science principles to a real world example. We used ASP.NET and worked with an amazing sponsor who had previously led the C# team at Microsoft. Kenworth ended up using what we developed for their teams.

What I got most out of this was working with a cross functional team in the professional world. Learning to communicate to business stakeholders and developers, then executing on a shared vision.