"You're going to be very rich." These words came out of Medhi Zargham, the University of Dayton's computer science department head the day I submitted the paperwork to switch majors. I grinned. When people asked me why I'm switching to Computer Science, I never used money as the reasoning behind my decision, but Medhi tells it how it is. The week before, I bought the Arduino Starter Kit, and reviewed my old C++ projects from my high school class. I saw Clay10 Webb's career, looked at barely-existent computer science career, and got to work.

Most of the computer scientists I know in college are good at one thing: computer science. My CompSci roommate Jared Aronson last year compiled Linux from scratch, found an internship, wrote code, watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and built a fake line of cars from s***show engineering. If it weren't for him, Noah Pasco, and Clayton Palmer, I probably wouldn't have switched majors & my entire career.

The Arduino & door-relay project, shown on the left, was a project I completed with Evan Krimpenfort. I didn't realize most engineering-enthusiasts don't take apart their door/phone control panels and I truly did not realize at the time what great friends I had, who were not only willing, but rather truly excited to hang out with me and partake in microelectronic projects.

Beyond my personal projects and hobbies, I am a full-time game/web/app developer at the US Air Force making virtual reality simulations for education and training purposes at the Gaming Research Integration for Learning Laboratory. I also coordinate and support our STEM outreach efforts in the classroom.

I never would have imagined I'd be making website. I have a computer science degree, but it's so easy to build static websites nowadays, people can do it themselves.

Yet - I've found myself making websites for the Air Force or different bands. I edit content and design all my sites so they look beautiful and are easy to edit by my clients without the need to re-hire myself or someone else for minor changes.

The jack of all trades is the master of none. I see lots of students beef up their lives with things that do not matter to them. They'll join sororities and complain about them more than they enjoy them. They'll play intermural volleyball, but never have any urge to get better. When you ask "what do you love to do," they oftentimes do not have an answer. When they do, they rarely have time to apply themselves.

Playing the piano well requires lots of practice and lots of patience. Good piano players go above and beond just playing the right notes and the right rhythm. They spend 15 minutes working on 4 measures until they get the technique just right and focus on dynamics and work towards becoming a better piano player instead of playing just to finish a song.

By doing one thing well, I was able to make my hobby a career. I am a freelance piano teacher.

People are surprised when I tell them I work in the entertainment industry. They are even more shocked when I tell them I'm a theatre minor. Then they're even more surprised out to find out I work in the theatre business.

"You work crazy hours. You don't even get paid that much. You're a computer science major, you can do so much better," they say. And they're not wrong either. It's not a 9-5 job and you can't go on tour and raise children at the same time. I can get paid more to write code (and I do).

But in my time in High School, the Boll Theatre, the PNC Arts Annex, Timothy's Bar, and even a few months in London, I've accomplished so much. I've developed technical drawings, created light plots, helped run events using fancy lighting and sound equipment. At the end of the day, you see a beautiful set and a beautiful production. It's euphoric. And you do it all over again because you love it.

Having a plan, even if it's a loosely defined career plan is something I greatly value. Lots of people do many different jobs, but they are usually not working towards something. If you want to be the director of Air Force Research Labs, you can! But you don't just sign up. You'd better start working in AFRL first, get a mentor that is providing value to you, becoming a department head, and only from there can you work your way up.

Life is going to go on, and I want to complete my advanced degrees before I get married, have a wife, and children. I have earned opportunities for a free masters through the University of Dayton and the Air Force.

Oftentimes, senior positions require senior levels of education. If I don't take the chance to earn free degrees now, I may not have opportunities to do so quite as easily in the future.

It's extremely important to me that my workplace will be supportive of furthering my education so I can advance the company's mission and my subject understanding of computer science fields.

I want to make an impact on this planet, and the best way I can do that is by creating opportunities to employ people. Although I'm not quite sure what I want to do, I have some ideas:

1. Portable projection mapping: Put laser projectors on drones and fly them around as laser pointers or guides for pedestrian traffic for large evens like Disney World. Requires only $10-20K to do on a small scale.

2. Laser Drone Weapondry: identify targets & temporarily blind them using lasers on drones. Useful for spies and US military applications. These could be attached to a Boston Dynamics robot for automation.

We all have different goals in life, and too often, I get caught in the machine of doing what everyone else wants from me. My peers want me to go drink with them and faculty try to persuade my involvement in their pograms. Following other people's advice is helpful and I always welcome and appreciate it; however, imagining my own future gives me hope for the future. It lets me extend beyond learning and gaining knowledge to solving other people's problems and inventing solutions. Because of this, I'm able to teach piano lessons to children. I'm able to develop programs for limitless applications. Using my imagination helps me achieve happiness. Never stop imagining.

• Matt Evans is an educator and my boss. He works so much overtime without getting paid. He said do your best at whatever you do. Without getting paid and without any complaints, he does an exceptional job motivating me to learn look past the money and appreciate the other benefits. He'll also get me good internships & set me up for a career. I would not be here without him.

• Dr. Wolfe inspires me to be the best piano player I can be. Join jazz combo - Phil Burkhead. I found a piano in London.

• Both inspire me to pursue knowledge.

• Now I have a website. The best I could do. Comics & marketing.

• Loved being a camp blue counsellor. Even without money, I helped others and saw my results make a huge difference.

• Motivated me to become the president of a recording studio.

• I keep close touch with best friends from high school over bonfires.

• Build a castle with them.

• Pursuit of other perspectives.

• In the Netherlands, there is less pressure to marry. It counteracted my perspective to "get married before everyone graduates and is taken."

• The best part is helping others to become happier. Not judging them.

• Going so far as to take ownership of someone else's problems.

• This American Life is my favorite show.

• "The old ways work." But I'm curious.

• Resistance to innovation: Youtube is bad. Social media is bad. TV rots your brain.

• Ways I've innovated: Notes on iPad/OneNote/Evernote/Notability/PDF Documents. It's failed me and is the reason I earn A's.

• Collecting data as scientifically and drawing conclusions from it.

• Being open to new perspectives & listening to others advice. Need to be critical too; has gotten me into trouble.

• Go to thee park at 8PM after the sun sets and hold hands as you run around and lay a blanket.

• Solving problems I didn't create (door lock, 3D Printing everything)

• Some people are stuck in their own ways. It works, but they fail to innovate. I know more than some union crews do about their own equipment.

• I want to get an edge on others.

I used to hate advertising and promotion of any kind. For businesses, it made sense intuitively. I never minded it when it came from my friends either, because I always wanted to be invited and there was a fear of missing out. Once upon a time without social media and news was delivered by paper, it wasn't hard to keep up. In high school, keeping up wasn't too hard; however, in college, I was bombarded by a seemingly infinite amount of news. I signed up for too many clubs and too many email lists. After trying to keep up, I gave up. I turned to this "how dare you ask me for my time. Don't you know that you're not in my top thousand priorities? Don't you know that you're not in anyone's top thousand priorities? For we all have homework and better things to do."

That's an exaggeration of course, but it holds truth. And I lived by this code of shutting up because nobody cares. It's like sharing an idea on GroupMe and being like "let's go to King's Island" and three people liking it. It usually doesn't go anywhere, so it's easy to develop this "what's the point?" attitude. So I gave up using social media. I wrote essays about how social media usage is turning us into fakers.

Three things happened to change my opinion. First, Laura Bute. Second, Beth Hosek. Three, Microeconomics. First up, Laura. We had a Beignet party and one of our mutual friends hosted. In front of everyone, she shouted and said "Do we all want to thank Becca for hosting making Beignets?" And we all clapped. Second, Beth Hosek tells me about her sorority events and quidditch social gatherings. I am always invited, and even though I do not care about quidditch or sorority events for the most part, I appreciate her thinking of me enough to invite me.

Lastly, in Microeconomics, I learned about monopolistic competition. Monopolies are profitable, and perfectly competitive firms are not. Firms that are monopolistically competitive profit when they are different. Tide or McDonalds is monopolistically competitive. There are no barriers to entry in the market of laundry detergent or cheeseburgers. Anyone can do it; however, these brands thrive because of good advertising. It makes customers think "I want McDonalds" instead of "I want the cheapest Cheeseburger I can find." So when I'm driving past as McDonalds, I always think to myself "man a McFlurry would be really nice right now." Not just because the name sticks in my head, but because I can expect a high-quality consistent product.

This is a large mentality shift for me, but to get other's respect in a such a competitive market of 9.8 billion other people, I need to start speaking up. It's no longer just enough to be consistently good. I need to speak up, which is the premise behind constructing an entire website. It's helping me figure out who I want to be, and it's showing everyone else who I am.

1. Humans all crave attention. It's built into us.

2. We get our sense of importance in different ways. I think social media is stupid. Sororities too.

3. Nobody cares what I'm in. I'm not "part of the honors society." I drive value using my theatrical skills. What I do and how I bring value is more important.

4. People like the party tricks like backflips & handstands in college. It makes me feel important. Way more than talking about myself.

5. To do amazing things, we have to take risks. I have to solve problems I don't entirely know how to solve and learn from my failures.

6. Especially in Academia, I need to take risks, and that's exactly what I'm doing now with extra responsibilities, side projects, and designs.