Finding Motivation and Direction

I started my undergraduate studies in the Bachelor of Computing. However, after meeting some advanced science students on a school trip to Miri, Malaysia, I was convinced that Advanced Science was the course that was going to provide the challenge and interest I was looking for at university. Until then, many of my courses had felt like self-directed learning and were quite easy but only covered topics to a surface level. I wanted to investigate cutting-edge technologies instead of the 15-year-old deprecated frameworks we used in class.

At the start of my Advanced Science course, I was still on exchange, so I had to keep up with the online classes. Most of my energy was spent keeping up with my studies at Purdue, but the topics discussed in the NPSC classes intrigued me, and I was fast approaching the deadline to find and select a project for the year. I have always been interested in applying technology to the healthcare industry, so I settled on Natural Language Processing for Diabetes Diagnosis.

Upon returning to Australia and having more time to focus on my project, I discovered I wasn't very interested in the topic, making it hard to find the self-drive to continue progressing. As I learnt more about how NLP worked and tried to decipher what I would need to do, I lost the spark that interested me in the topic in the first place. I often thought, "Why did I put myself into this position?" or "Why did I change into Advanced Science?". I felt lost and defeated for quite a while.

When the second semester started, I started to change my mindset; instead of feeling down about the work needed and the perceived difficulty, I needed to tackle it head-on and get past it. This project was a learning experience for me and an important project piece to highlight my skills to future employers, especially with how big of a topic AI and Machine Learning is in the computing field today. I've also learnt that I need to push harder for what I'm truly interested in. Although it's always good to try new things and explore new subject areas, I was drawn to computing to make software that provides a great user experience, and I need to keep this in mind when selecting my project for next year.