Matthew

My Background

During my undergraduate studies, I planned on pursuing medical school after the completion of my biology degree. However, I began to lose interest in the field just before graduation. I have always had an interest in technology ever since I was little, and I decided it was time to pursue that.

Prior to joining the Align program, I had just completed my bachelor’s degree. I was working at a hotel to make ends meet while trying to figure out how to break into the tech field. I started taking courses at a local community college to help get up to speed with programming, and even got an internship as a project manager where I then switched to working on software after a conversation with my manager.

Why Khoury?

I chose Khoury College of Computer Sciences because it has great resources and funding to create an interactive learning environment. The professors have real-world tech experience and connections, as well. I chose the Align program because of the opportunity to be surrounded by other people in the same boat as me who are trying to break into tech with unique backgrounds. The bridge courses were challenging but eye-opening overall, I believe they pushed me to truly understand the fundamentals necessary to move forward.

Co-Op

I completed a co-op for Teradyne in North Reading, MA. I worked with hardware engineers to automate manual tasks that they had to perform using excel. There, I created a simple spreadsheet analyzer for hardware engineers and an automated operational load for engineers who work on-call. I am doing another co-op for Google where I will be developing a front-end feature for an enterprise dashboard. Lastly, my final co-op will be for Amazon Web Services working with the Elastic File System team. Overall, having three different internships will grant me great experience in looking for the field I want to break into when I graduate.

My Future

I am mainly interested in software engineering and developing products that have an impact on users in some way. I believe every field has this aspect in one way or another, so I’m still searching for the one field that suits me best.