I finished community college with 124 credits taken and a GPA of 3.824. I had a chance to be taken around to some of the different 4 year universities in the state as part of the honors program, but the only one in which we really got to me face to face with anyone was at the University of South Florida. Because of that and the fact they were going to give me a scholarship I decided to go there. However, that did not work out well for me. The reason is a combination of their computer science program not being what I really wanted (at that time their program was heavily engineering oriented) and not being able to adapt to the Tampa area as well as other reasons. I decided to go back home and try the University of Central Florida (UCF).

I decided not to try for the honors program at UCF and instead just be a regular student. It ended up working well as my first semester there I happened upon an announcement for a summer program called “Research Experience for Undergraduates” and somehow was selected to take part in it. To be honest I did not really have any idea about research or what it meant, instead I thought it would be a good thing to put on my resume and the stipend that they gave was also nice. The REU was focused on computer vision and I ended up doing research on determining body measurements of people in a calibrated scene to be used in aiding human identification. The experience taught me a lot about being a researcher and a professional. It also allowed me to publish my first paper, which in turn meant my first plane flight.

The REU program had a lot of lasting benfits for me. The money I received from doing it allowed me to go to Japan the next summer to study Japanese, which opened me up to a lot of new experiences and had a great impact on me. Also, shortly after starting the REU I started my software company LN3GS Software, which is still around.

There was one other event as an undergraduate that changed me a bit, which I will get into next time.

TO BE CONTINUED