NG JING JIE's Reflection
I have been searching a suitable word in my mind that can describe my new university life for so long. The only word i could ever think of is the word "busy".
Yes. That is right! Ever since i started enter university on 3rd September, my life have a dramatic changes. The overwhelming workloads, assignments and tests are stressing myself out. At the same time, I need to struggle a lot as I have no basic knowledge about Computer Science before. To overcome these problems, I have to keep track on my study schedule to get things done one by one. Luckily, I am able to handle it well after the first few weeks of stressed-out period.
One things that made me felt so blessed is the lecturers and course mates that I spent most of the time with. I am truly thankful to all the lecturers that taught me and guided me during classes. My course mates especially, this awesome bunch of people made my university life full of laughs and memories! I am really enjoy study with them and make fun together.
I am looking forward to create more memory in my university life in upcoming years. Let us made this journey a great one!
"I learned a new French word today."
"What is it?"
" 'Au revoir'. It means goodbye."
"Is it fun in learning French?"
"Oui..oops, did i speak in French again?"
*Oui = yes (in english)
After learning French for about few months, the same kind of conversations has taken place again and again.
It is always a pleasure for me whenever i can learn something new, especially foreign language. From my personal point of view, French is really hard to learn in my early stage and frustrated me most of the time. However, as time passed, I am proud to say that I am able to read, write, communicate and understand about this language. It is undeniable to say that French is such beautiful language in the world. Although it is still a long path for me to master it, I am looking forward to further discover the beauty of French.
Before entering this course, I have totally zero knowledge about programming languages, coding or anything related to programming. In order for me to catch up the syllabus that lecturer taught in class, I have to practice and study hard. For me, programming required a lot of skills and patience especially when I am coding.This is really frustrated when I cannot get the output correctly during coding. However, I had learned a lot via assignments and lab exercises. This is the moment where I found out that programming is indeed really fun and interesting. My interest towards programming and coding is increasing day by day and I am really enjoy what I am learning now.
If someone ever asked me what is the most interesting subject to me, it must be Technology & Information System.
I never thought that this subject will bring me so much fun and knowledges throughout this learning journey. Apart from all the learning and teaching session in lecturer hall, I got the opportunity to have some industrial visit to CIMB and ADAX which really widen my horizon. The speakers of all the talks that I have been through are so experienced and passionate about IT field, this had further increase my interest in this field. Besides, this subject have really improve my report writing skills through all the reports I have done and design thinking skills which is really useful in my future needs.
I can't wait to explore more knowledges in this courses.
What is your goal/dream with regarding to your course/program?
Regarding to the courses we are studying which is data engineering, our main goal is to become a successful data engineer in the future. We hope to become a successful data engineer that equip with all the requirements a successful data engineer should have. For example, having deep knowledge of SQL database design, multiple programming languages and familiarity with data administration. We are looking forward to work as a part of analytics team, to provide a platform for modelling data and help enterprise to achieve their business goals. Also, we want to contribute our efforts to develop our country through digital technology.
How does this design thinking impact on your goal/dream with regard to your program?
After we got involved in this design thinking project, it further strengthen our goal to become a data engineer. In this new digital era, there is no doubt that the demand of Big Data will increase surprisingly in the future. Throughout this design thinking process, we found out that this is the best way to provide a solution-based approach in solving real life problems. Undergoing the stages in design thinking which included empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test, we gained an insight on what is the job scope of a data engineer. This further strengthen our convictions which is to become a data engineer that can contribute our efforts to the people needed. By mastering all these skills, we really hope we can use our skill to help people out there by using the data we have collected.
What is the action/improvement/plan necessary for you to improve your potential in the industry?
We should have a mindset that never stop learning as there is many knowledges out there waiting for us to explore. Also, keep updating ourselves and master the skills that is needed for us to become a skillful data engineer. We also plan to enhance our skills on various aspects such as SQL, data architecture, data warehousing and database solutions. We believe that by keep improving our skills and self-value, we are able to improve our potential in the industry.
After attending to this talk, I gained a clearly insight about GLOW. I’m surprise that everyone can earn extra income by working online. This scenario showed that the role of digital technology have transform our lives so much in contrast to the past. Also, GLOW surprised me as everyone with or without knowledge can work under GLOW as it provides mentorship and coaching throughout the learning program which is really beneficial.
As I know GLOW is mainly about earning jobs or projects from global crowdsourcing platforms, I am blessed that I am a computer science student as this program really brighten up my future career path. I need not to worry about finding jobs in companies out there as I can register under Higher Learning Institutions Program and be a full time freelancer which will exploring me to various choice of career.
Since GLOW is beneficial especially in my courses computer science, I hope that my school will introduce Digital Workforce as an elective courses to students. In this case, I as the undergraduate are able to gain new skills and experience to work on global crowdsourcing platforms.
During our first industrial visit in Center for Information and Communication Technology (CICT) in UTM, we were fortunate enough to learn how CICT does their work and services in UTM KL and JB. When we had our visit, I was really inspired on how their system and organization working to make the system running without having a lot of problems.
Since we are studying degree in data engineering, we are having the same dream, to be a data engineer in the future. Data engineer is someone that build massive reservoirs for big data. They develop and maintain such as database and large-scale data processing system. Data engineer may work together with data architect and data scientist. They often struggle with problems associated with database integration and messy, unstructured data sets. Their final aim is to provide clean, usable data to whomever may require it.
During the visit, we amazed on how all the data in UTM KL and JB being connected to each other and how their teamwork within the organization to produce a good services for all the students and staff in UTM either in KL or JB which it becoming one of our reason why we choose to be a data engineer in the future. Besides, CICT also provided services to manage, supervise and maintain the main database of the University which is being used by UTM university system which make we feel more inspired to pursue in this job.
Since we are interested in data engineering, there a lot of improvement that we need to do to be a part of the industry. One of them is we need to be fluent in the language and tools to help us to get hired. We also need to be extremely comfortable at the command line. Besides, we have to master in two or three programming language such as c++,c and java. This will help us to gain a lot of skill which can draw people attention that will help us to get hired. Last but not least, we also need to understand database management and in-depth knowledge of SQL which is hugely valuable. This skill also will give us a lot of help especially if we are interested in freelancing business.
As we all know this Data Engineering courses is a new courses, we as student still did not have a clear mindset of this courses in the aspect of our future and career path, this industrial visit to ADAX totally change our mind and we are now have a clear mindset on our future.
Throughout the visit in ADAX, the biggest benefits we gained is in the talk session. During the talk, we gained an insight on how ADAX function where ADAX aims to develop the ecosystem and build a critical mass of talent pool in the big data analytics category. This is the time we realized the importance of data analyst and data scientist, and our role as undergraduates in this courses really matter.
Besides of all the talks given during the visit, we had a short tour in the working spaces in ADAX which is truly amazed us, the working environment is so nice and comfortable! Also, it is good to know that ADAX provides a paid finishing school training program in order to develop industry-ready Data Professionals in Malaysia. Other program they offered for example Innovative Lab, Talent Development and Start-Ups is really benefits to us as data engineering student.
We are really appreciate that visiting to ADAX gave us the idea about industry which initially lead us to decide our future career at an early stage. One main thing is, since ADAX have cooperate with few industrial company, it is a definitely good news to us as we can foreseen our bright future. To make this happen, we should be open minded, learn unconditionally from lectures and coursemates, improve our skills and knowledge in computer science. As we all know this road is hard, we should never give up until we achieve our goals which is to be a successful data analytics and data scientist.
We feel grateful to have a fruitful acquisition from CIMB. Through this visit, we gained new experiences and knowledges on banking sector, and our perspective towards this sector have changed. After the visit to CIMB, we have more understanding on the working environment in banking sector. Besides, we learnt that besides financial departments, IT departments play an essential role in a banking company, as it is the medium of all banking procedure, include service management, financial and administration, applications and infrastructures. Data management is an important assets of a banking companies and require high-level protection, as it not only stores customers information, it also act as a guideline to help banking company to improve their system and decide the future path.
Besides, this visit also gave us more detailed information of our available carrier in the future. Banking is actually one of the available options we can consider to get into since there are also demands on manpower who have capability to work with big data. However, getting into this sector are not easy as the criteria of qualification is high. This gave us an impact on knowing that what is still lacking among us in order to have higher potential in market.
Therefore, we need to improve ourselves in order to have higher potential and more competitive in the market. We will learn more new things, gain more knowledge and experience outside the lectures, besides work hard to perform well in academic. We will also be active in extracurricular activities to gain new skills apart from academic field. This is important because soft skills will also be considered by employers when taking new employees.