In the past year, I have had experiences which profoundly impacted my goals. The 2023-2024 academic year was my first year on campus, and I had a multitude of impactful experiences, ranging from my first co-op to my self-designed honors experience.

 

During my Spring 2024 co-op, I had the opportunity to work as a data engineer in Fifth Third Bank’s Enterprise Data Office. I feel that I learned a lot and grew both technically and professionally. I worked on a Scrum-based team with other data engineers to develop and maintain a new data product for customer-related information.

 

When I first started out with my IT career, I thought I wanted to fully pursue software development. However, this immersion into data engineering showed me the possibilities behind data. I learned that I love working with data, exploring its intricacies and unraveling the mysteries behind it. As of this Spring, I am more inclined to pursue data as a career path. In fact, I’m continuing on at Fifth Third this Fall, and I will once again have the chance to manipulate and analyze data. I don’t claim that my career is set in stone, but this co-op has helped me realize how much I want to continue working with data. One specific goal which I plan to execute during this co-op is to explore a different area of the data sector; in the Spring, I worked with customer data, but during the Fall, I would like to work on the regulatory and compliance side.

 

Working at Fifth Third also reinvigorated my desire to give back to the Cincinnati IT community. Information technology organizations have been formative for me since high school, and I wish to participate however possible in the Cincinnati IT scene. During the Fall semester, I plan to join the IT Student Association. After I graduate, I want to continue with my participation in the IT community, and joining the UC ITSA is a great way to step into that.

 

Additionally, I completed my first self-designed honors experience during the Spring semester. I developed a website for my mom’s business. In the future, I will do more self-designed projects that I can discuss with coworkers. Before this experience, I hadn’t done many personal coding projects, but this experience led me to want to code more on my own time. During the next year, I resolve to complete at least one personal project.

 

Overall, I have learned a lot during the past two semesters, and I hope to continue to grow as I move into the 2024-25 season.