Samuel Collado is my name, it is amazing how this name is giving to you by two people and it is your identity for life. I am a New York City College of Technology undergraduate student; this school is actually pretty amazing. The major I decided to get a degree on was Computer Software. I have been using computers since I was twelve years old, if you were expecting something like “Since I was a kid” then you are sadly mistaken. Many people may say six years may not be enough to love something with a true passion. But I use computers day and night; I use my computer for literally everything. When I am bored, I test my WPM (Word per Minute) to kill time. I get insanely excited when I excel my max. My max WPM at the moment is 92, pretty high in my opinion. Throughout this essay I will go into specific details about my major. How it will help me pursue other dreams such as YouTube, the jobs and income of Computer Software Engineers & because technology will never stop evolving.

Clearly, the future will be mostly based on computing. That is the main reason as to why I decided to go for Computer Software. This field will never be outdated, because technology is always improving. Google is where everyone wants to work including myself, more or so for the money. What I really want is to be a famous YouTuber and majoring in this field will help me learn more about software and help me produce higher quality videos. According to The 2014-2015 Course Catalog, It states that “The Program’s structure will allow for timely changes in Specialization course offerings as the information technology field evolves.” Clearly The Course Catalog also mentioned how information technology field evolves, supporting my statement.

College students tend to aim for masters in that glorious major. What they do not know is that by sticking to just one thing and aiming for a major, it will take you down this horrible narrow path. A path where you will wake up, go to work, sleep and rinse and repeat. I personally think that is a foolish decision, acquiring a degree is perfectly fine but doing more with that degree is a lot more productive and exciting. Computer Software will help me in several things such a YouTube. In my first paragraph I stated that I wanted to work for Google, working for Google and majoring in Computer Software will help my YouTube career improve dramatically. I would be able to advertise my videos a lot easier and I would learn a lot more of computing therefore improving my editing skills. According to The Associated Press “Google buys YouTube for #  1.65 Billion Dollars” Clearly, here we see that YouTube is now also part of Google. Now I want to work for Google even more, working for google will allow me to kill two birds with one stone.

Computer Software’s Engineers have plenty of jobs to choose from, this is a great field and it will be increasing over the years. Some of the jobs can be IT (Information Technology), Design, Management, Professional Services, Customer Service, Installation Service and lots more. We all want well-paying jobs are I right? According to Bureau of Labor Statistics Computer Software Developer makes roughly $100,000 a year and $45 an hour. Also one does not need work experience not on the job training, everything you need to learn will be taught to you through your college career. The numbers of jobs in 2012 are 1,018,000 and will be increasing by 22% from 2012-22 which is faster than average, this was stated in Bureau of Labor Statistics. I may not finish College by 2022, hopefully a lot earlier. But, 22% is a huge increase and will help me and others joining this field dramatically.

Technology will always be improving, always. There will always be a time where something new will be made and something else will be evolved from that previous creation. Technology will never stay left behind; it will always be the king of this world. That is another reason as to why I want to major into Computer Software. My life will always become a school, I will always be learning new things of the thing that I love which is Computers. There will not be a day where I stop learning something new because it will always change, all the time. Everyone uses technology; we do not want to be left behind. Technology is a huge important key to our society, and working with it is a win-win situation. According to Mobile Technology Fact Sheet, as of January 2014 90% of Americans adults have a cell phone. Also 58% of American adults have a smartphone, aren’t those numbers insane! Let’s go back to our topic, Computers. This may not be a surprise for some of you but the number is what’s surprising, 95% of Americans have either used or own a computer at home. That is only leaving 5% which are probably elderly people. Why would you want to major into something that can die out in a few years, probably no one.

The classes I am currently taking at City Tech are not what I would want to take. I am currently taking electives but they are definitely going to help me in the future. For example, Public Speaking will help me interact with more and will help me with interviews and presentations in my future job. Math classes will definitely help me with my major because anything that has to do with computers requires math. English will improve my speaking and my writing, making me sound more professional. There was only one person in my major’s department, his name is David Belhensen. Belhensen was not such a welcoming person, but I still asked if I could ask him two questions about my major. Surprisingly he replied yes, Thank god he did. One of these questions was “Is this a hard path to take?” the second one was “From 1-10 how fun are computer courses?” To the first question Belhensen replied and I quote “Computer Software is a hard journey for people who are not friendly with math, but if you are expect it to flow smoother than a waterfall.” To the second question he replied “10, To me computer courses are extremely entertaining because it feels as if you are creating something new. When you make an error you fix it, you are the God or the Creator of this machine. It is an amazing feeling”. I strongly agree with David Belhensen, even myself when I troubleshoot my own laptop or tweak it so that it would perform faster with games I feel such a great joy when I succeed.

Computer Software is a major for those who can spend hours and hours on computers. For those who find it fun just tweaking, playing video games, surfing the web a lot. I would recommend Computer Software to almost anyone, simply because their jobs are raising 22% by the end of 2020. That is a huge number right there and whoever does not take advantage of that will be missing out. Computer Software is a huge field, you will most likely find a job in it after you graduate from college I sure hope I do. If you are not math friendly, I suggest taking another route. According to the Course Catalog of City Tech, you will need to take Pre-calculus. That is the minimum math course you must pass, who knows what else they throw at us Computer Software majors.

WORK CITED

Belhensen, David. In Person Interview. 12.2.2014

Collado, Samuel “The Joy Of My Life” Flickr. 5 December 2014. 7 December 2014

Collado, Samuel “Hell But Helpful” Flickr. 5 December 2014. 7 December 2014

Collado, Samuel “The Start Of My Life” Flickr. 5 December 2014. 7 December 2014

New York City College of Technology (City Tech). College Catalog 2014-2015. 2014. PDF. 18 November 2014.

Pew Internet, “Mobile Technology Fact Sheet”. Pewinternet.org, PewResearch Internet Project.9.25.2014, Web. 12.7.2014

The Associated Press, “Google buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion”. Nbcnews.com, NBC News,12.7.2014, Web. 12.7.2014.

United States. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Software Developers”. Bureauof Labor Statistic. Department of Labor. 1.8.2014. Web. 12.7.2014

INTRODUCTION

In this project I used my thoughts, a pencil, paper and a camera to compress all of my thoughts into a  blog. While reading this blog you will see in one part all of my thoughts in one day, in another part you will see my pictures that represent some of my thoughts and in the last part you will see my essay that I have written about my thoughts.

THINKING IN WRITING

12:52 PM – I just woke up and I want to go back to bed, I woke up thinking I had English class so I rushed up from bed but as soon as I got up I noticed I did not and went back to sleep.

1:23 – Playing some destiny, wondering when to do my homework.

1:54 – Helping my girlfriend with her homework, also watching a show. Relaxing day.

2:28 – Doing some homework, thinking of college

2:58 – Thinking how stupid it is to drink alcohol and go clubbing

3:30 – Trying to analyze a passage with my girlfriend. Too confusing, I’m re reading it over and over.

4:03 – Finishing up the passage finally understood it, the brain is a crazy machine

4:33 – I hate my math professor, he is never prepared to teach us.

5:03 – reading some brain rules, great book.

5:43 – Feeling happy because my girlfriend was in a bad mood and she finally laughed

6:14 – Finished doing all my homework except this one and stopped playing destiny. Now I’m just in my bed relaxing, what a relaxing day

6:45 – Going to watch a movie, also relaxed still.. Nice day

7:15 – Just saw a great movie named fireproof, it’s amazing how a movie can influence a person In real life

7:45 – Talked with my girlfriend on the phone and We spoked about our favorite part of the movie

8:15 – Reading brain rules, trying to stay up to date with my class.

8:45 – Why is our brain so limited?

9:15 – answering a survey to figure out if I’m a perfectionist or not, I’m not.

9:45 – Finishing off my night with some food and some nice destiny gaming.

10:10 – Time to sleep! Not a very interesting day but it was a day.

THINKING VISUALLY

The first photo I took which I titled “Our Brain” focuses on the book that I am currently reading in class. Our brain is an amazing machine and we still have yet to fully understand it, something that controls use and yet we do not understand, pretty insane right?

The second picture I took I titled “Math” , My math professor is horrible and I hate math, combining these two ruined my world, seriously.

My third picture is titled “Fireproof” , While watching this picture I was amazed how a movie can change someone in real life. After the movie ended I had some introspection myself and wanted to change my life.

My fourth and last picture is titled “Bed” , who doesn’t want to stay in bed? Everyone’s bed is the best thing to them in their life, I guarantee it.

Thinking Rhetorically and Reflectively

            Thoughts are uncontrollable, it happens to everybody. Some thoughts are amazing and will help our world a ton. Like our buildings, cars, airplanes, cell phones and a ton more. But thoughts can also be very frustrating and distracting, like thinking of playing a game while reading or spacing out during class and thinking of your house and that comfortable bed. Those are the thoughts I receive. My name is Samuel Collado and I am an undergraduate student at City Tech. I love to read and write and I also love to exercise and play video games. My concentration is horrible unless I’m exercising or playing a video game. But when I read or when I write, for instance right now. I easily get distracted and start to think about several different useless stuffs. I need to find a way focus my thoughts a lot A LOT more, I can’t get through a studying session with this brain that I currently have, and it must be enhanced. My thoughts are all over the place, I can’t seem to concentrate on one thing and I know it’s normal but I wished it wasn’t like that. Sometimes I wish I can just connect my book to my brain through some sort of cable, therefore no disruptions will occur.

Throughout this essay you will see how amazingly connected and concentrated my thoughts are (Yeah Right). When I woke up on the day of my thoughts assignment, I was prepping myself the night before. Why? I simply did not want thoughts that were horribly stupid and lame. But like I said in my introduction, it is uncontrollable. I woke up wanting to go back to bed, “I just woke up and I want to go back to bed” this thought is called “The Perfect Place”. People may think that’s normal, sure everyone wakes up wanting to stay in bed all day but that’s not something I want to wake up thinking. I want to get up from bed, jumping off as if my bed was a trampoline. I want to be ready for school instantly and I want my thoughts to be “Let’s go learn today and become smarter” or “Can’t wait to study and test myself on the answers”. Those thoughts have never gone through my head in a morning, unless I have a test which, but those aren’t positive thoughts.

If you were to picture a student, what do you think his thoughts are while he’s at school Maybe “Wow that’s interesting, I did not know that”. Not me, while I’m in school I think of so many different things it’s embarrassing. During my English class, my professor was explaining how our brain works, how it remembers things and how it learns. That’s amazingly interesting now that I think about it, but while he was explaining I was thinking of Destiny, A Video game that just recently released for the Playstation 4. “Playing some Destiny, wondering when to do my homework” this thought is called “Gaming before School” unbelievable. A college student wondering when to do homework, I should knock that off the same day I receive it, but I never think of that. Instead I think of playing a game that will not help me one bit in neither life nor education. I sometimes think of staying home the entire day and just play Destiny. Max out my character to the highest level possible, do the intense raids with my friends and rinse and repeat, sounds so productive. I want that to change to “I want to stay home all day and finish this book, re read my notes and make sure all my homework is done”.

Everyone expects college professor to be amazingly intelligent and the perfect people to listen to. But listen carefully, change that mind set because you’ll want to change that course or run out of the classroom when you receive a professor the opposite of that. Although my thoughts are still all over the place I do not consider this one a bad one. “My math professor sucks” this thought is titled “He Sucks”, pretty rude but is amazingly true. This guy comes in 20 minutes late and teaches us based on his Galaxy Note 3. If you’re teaching a subject I imagine you’ll be an expert at it, right? But let’s go back to my thoughts. So far it went from bed to destiny to math sucks. As you can see none of my thoughts are about education, well one of them is but it’s not exactly something positive. During his class I sometime try to force my thoughts onto math, it happens for about five minutes but it drifts away, a lot more than usual. I personally don’t think I’m the one to blame here, because according to my psychology professor it takes five minutes to keep someone’s attention, if you fail you’ll lose their attention. Pretty selfish to think like that, so I’ll take the blame, they are my thoughts afterwards. Nobody controls them, wish I at least could.

My thoughts never drifts away when I’m watching a movie and I never understood why. Maybe because I’m curious as to what will happen at the end? But regardless it’s extremely rare that my thought stays focused on one thing. I was watching a movie titled “Fireproof”, it was an amazing Christian movie. Throughout the entire movie I did not think of something else. I was just reading the subtitles and watching the movie, the entire movie and no other thoughts. I still remember everything that happened in that movie, which is also something rare, my memory is horrible. After the movie I stopped for a second and thought “I literally did not think of anything else but this movie, how weird “, I title this “Everything Should Be a Movie”. If everything was a movie, maybe I would never lose concentration or at least I hope. But re reading this thought, maybe I find the brain interesting and maybe I might work as a psychologist in the future. Then it hit me! , that’s the first thought that was about my future, not quite but the “how weird” part shows that it caught my attention and I’ll love to look into it, when I’m done with this essay I’ll definitely do some research as to why we lose concentration.

Some would assume that these are all normal thoughts. That every teenager goes through this because we’re still kids. But that’s really ridiculous, I know people younger than me who can focus on one thing until they’re completely finished. Now, thinking about games may be normal. But not while I’m in class, that should be the last thing on my brain until I get home and still not until I finish my homework or study. Others may assume that staying in bed when you wake up is totally normal, hell everyone might agree with that. But I do not want to wake up with that thought, no matter how normal it is. I want to wake up thinking about my future, my classes, and my career. I want to wake up asking myself, how am I going to find a job to gain experience? I want to wake up ready for the world, not sleepy again. It’s incredibly amusing to myself how strictly I talk about changing my thoughts but I never do anything about it, this has to change.

There has to be some sort of solution for this unorganized thoughts of mine. I was thinking of ways to help myself and I finally created some steps to secure my thoughts into one thing at a time. Let’s say I’m in class and I’m losing concentration, I thought maybe it’ll be perfect if I look at the teacher. I can’t stare at him because it’ll be weird, but I’ll try to maintain eye contact as much as I can. Another setting would be if I was home and I had to study. I was thinking of locking myself in my closet (pretty depressing) with a lamp. From there I’ll leave all technology out and focus on the paper in front of me, there I will not have any distractions. My last and most distracting situation is doing homework, the reason to this is because I know I have a couple of days until it’s due therefore leaving it for last minute. But I think I may have found a solution, right after my classes’ end I will head directly to the school Library and do my homework there. When I get home I will be done and no thoughts would’ve distracted me. As you can see I want my thoughts to be focused on school and nothing else as of now, that’s where my priority stands.

WORK CITED

asuratraitor [Samuel Collado]. “Re: Project 1: Thinking in Writing” Openlab: ENG1101 D377 English Compisition 1, FA2014. 22 Sept.2014. Monday.13 Oct.2014.

Collado.Samuel “Bed.” Flickr. October 3, 2014. Web. October 13, 2014.

Collado.Samuel “Fireproof.” Flickr. October 3, 2014. Web. October 13, 2014.

Collado.Samuel “Math.” Flickr. October 3, 2014. Web. October 13, 2014.