Reflections on the Sys Eng ALM
Hey folks, hope everyone has had a good semester and is wrapping up finals okay. I gave my capstone presentation on Monday and will be graduating on the 28th (or at least I was verbally told I had passed) and I wanted to give some thoughts on the program for anyone interested.
First the capstone, this was an amazing and awful experience. For starters we got to work with a real organization and help them solve real problems in their workplace. It was very much a real working collaboration. On the other hand one thing I never wanted to do with my degree was become a frontend developer so naturally we picked a project where I got to be a front end developer. It was incredibly difficult to learn a new framework and work with the client and keep up with my day job, but in the end it gave me a lot more confidence that if I made some bad choices and ended up working as a web developer (jokes of course), that I wouldn't be completely lost on day 1 and I now have skills I never would have had without the capstone project.
For the program overall I think it was great, but I honestly wish I had challenged myself more. I got a lot out of it, but I know I avoided some classes because I didn't think I could hack it in them and I wish I had believed in myself more. I definitely took some classes that were way too easy and that's my own fault. I highly encourage all of you to really think about what you want to get out of your program. I know some people might just want to get any degree to fulfill a work requirement or something like that and that's A-OK by me. If that's the case you can definitely accomplish that at HES without being overly stressed. For those of you that really want to stretch and learn new skills you can absolutely do that here too, just believe in yourself and take that class that looks really intimidating, virtually every instructor I had was wonderful at helping people succeed so there's help out there if you need it. This program really is what you make of it.
I will also add that for anyone looking at the sys eng ALM specifically, the capstone project does not allow you to use LLMs, so if you're trying to chatGPT your way throught the degree, you will likely fail in your last semester if you're not able to write your own code, come up with your own plans, or justify you design decisions. The capstone comittee forces you to answer questions you might not be able to if you haven't really internalized the material.
Best of luck to everyone no matter where you are in your academic journey.