Alumni Spotlight
Please meet our Alumni Spotlight, Sophia Kim! Sophia is a recent graduate of our Department. Please read what Sophia have to say below.
1) Where do you currently work? Describe your role.
I work as a software development engineer at Hawaiian Airlines. I work for the Data and Common Services team, mainly working on the ingestion of data used for various reports and managing data sources.
2) What was your major at UH Manoa? How has your education & experiences at UH Manoa prepared you for your current position?
I majored in Computer Science at UH Manoa. UH Manoa and the ICS department have provided tremendous opportunities, such as on-campus jobs, internships, and workshops that helped me prepare for not only for my career but other necessary skills in life. The education and experiences that I obtained at UH Manoa also helped me stay motivated and taught me to always strive to achieve more. The supportive and open-mind environment that I was part of in the ICS department has allowed me to grow as an individual with a great work ethic and a positive attitude, which I’m able to demonstrate at my current position.
3)What was your best college memory?
The best college memory I can think of is all the study sessions I had with my friends at Sinclair and Hamilton library. I don’t think I will ever be as desperate as we were when we were trying to combine the brain power to finish a programming assignment just for the program to throw an error that made no sense to us. I believe at the time, I was praying my undergrad to be over so that I’d never have to be at the library again, but now I often find myself thinking back to those days and truthfully, those were probably the best days of my life.
4) What are some challenges you faced in your academic or professional career? How were you able to overcome them?
The one thing I struggled with the most is being afraid to fail. I vividly remember being in the lecture hall for ICS 111, looking around at all the people around me and wondering if I even knew enough about programming to be there – and it was almost enough for me to change my major to something completely different, because I was afraid that I wouldn't get good grades. I purposely didn’t register for classes that I felt I wouldn’t perform well in, although the topics taught in them interested me. I ignored so many opportunities for jobs and internships because I didn’t want to receive a rejection letter – it took me two years to apply for the Hawaiian Airlines summer internship, then almost a year of convincing from my friends, family and former supervisors to apply for my current position at Hawaiian Airlines. I don’t think I’ve fully overcome this fear yet, but now I try to view the challenges and fears I face as just another milestone in my life, that I won’t know the result for unless I actually tried. I also try to find joy in the process of learning and experiencing, regardless of the result.
5) What advice would you give to current computer science students? Any helpful resources?
There’s already a ton of resources on how to succeed in school and work, so here is the advice that I needed when I was in college: Take breaks and take care of yourself. It is important to care about your education, but it is also important to take care of yourself as well – something that I hadn’t realized until I got out of college. Taking a step back from the busy life always helps with regaining your strength, as if you just keep pushing, you’re prone to get burnt out afterwards. I feel like mental health easily becomes the last thing on people’s mind when they are swamped with assignments and exams but having mental health breaks here and there improves the overall performance in all aspects of life. There are a lot of resources out there on maintaining mental health and ways to take a proper mental health break, but here’s a quick starter that I found helpful: A Ted Talk by Hailey Hardcastle on why students should take mental health days.
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