The Trip Into 2020
Image: DigiPen Institute of Technology Front Entrance
Well, the time that I had always been waiting for is finally here but in the weirdest time and the weirdest fashion. I'm officially done with school and I have finally received my Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science and Game Design (BSCSGD) from DigiPen Institute of Technology. It was a really rough and tough journey to get here but I made it to this metaphorical mountain that is being able to find jobs with confidence of having a degree.
Before I started getting into DigiPen, I had experiences from a community college back in California and before that was obviously high school. Coming out of high school, my parents wanted me to pursue something that I really wasn't interested in and I had a long fight between staying in the major of Biochemistry and making my way to any UC. Within 3 years, I was able to switch my goals and instead of UC, I traded it with DigiPen. Honestly, Full Sail University was a close second but I felt more familiar with DigiPen.
Going into DigiPen, it was my first time actually being outside of the state of California and let alone visiting, I was actually living out-of-state with cohort mates. At first, I was shy and knew nothing about anyone and I had no knowledge on the city of Redmond or DigiPen with its inner workings. Freshman year was strangely easygoing because I had classes that covered some of the basics that I had seen before from past classes. I remember being awkward as a Freshman and how I wasn't able to handle different people/situations on a constant basis. It was really challenging to remove myself from being a self-centered and shy person to adapt with the school and the people that came with it. Additionally, I felt that the cohort's best work came out of our Freshman year but that was my opinion that I held since the end of Freshman year.
Sophomore year was the absolute worse, especially for being a BSCSGD. We as a whole were put on a constant loop of work between design and programming and sometimes math/art. We were grinding our teeth to make code counts. We bang our heads on walls to figure out ways to make our codes work for Computer Science classes. We wanted to design fun games but time says no, just make an absolute insane game that requires players' brains to be computers to make this fun. It was the most toughest year. I lost progress on my whole class schedule which means I failed a couple of classes. It made me even question myself in continuing being in the major due to the load of work needed to be done. In the end of that year, I did learn something valuable and that was that all failures are a learning point and it's not worth giving up and I think that was when things just clicked for me when being at DigiPen.
My third year was better but still tough at times. It was the first time I had a chance to make 3D games and it was really interesting. This year was when I was able to pump out so many different things and worked on multiple projects. Though not everything went smoothly but I still manage to learn a lot of things between teams, design, and Unreal. I also figured out how being too passionate could hurt me or burn me out and so I try to pace myself better. At the same time, I was able to manage the workload this time around and nothing really was happening beyond being able to socialize a little bit more.
Lastly, senior year was where things just went weird. I was anticipating work as usual. Classes that I have to go through and pass. Game projects that is needed to be worked on and learn from. Team to work with and power through milestones for the class. Then soon came the remote work/pandemic problems. At first, I held hope to return to normal school setting after a bit of time but that never ended sadly. As a senor, we didn't get to experience the school's yearly career fair, the dinner banquet where we hang out with our cohort (with free food, I believe), and the graduation ceremony which was moved to December. Everything was absolutely disheartening. Then, I have the belief that some companies may not want to hire at this time or that their process is so slow that I won't see myself working immediately out of school. I don't know. This year was weird, yet messy ending of a college career.
The end of my college career... It was nice. I miss being able to talk to my cohort friends in person. The whole experience at DigiPen has been crazy but I enjoyed some of it while hating some of the other parts of it. It gave me a safe space to try some things that I would otherwise would not get the chance to do. It gave me all the baseline information that I need to understand game development. It helped me get out of this problem of being shy and be a team player. I will never forget the years here at DigiPen.
I plan on writing some more about DigiPen on some other aspects but I'll hold that up for now.
