ICS 314 is the first class that I heard about RadGrad in and the name at least sounded a little funny. I assumed it would be some generic website where I select a few interests and it gives some careers to look at that match my current interests. I was mostly wrong because the website is much more in depth than I imagined it would be. It already knew what ICS classes I had taken in the past and also had a full list of all the ICS classes anyone could possibly take. I thought it was pretty amazing that all the ICS classes were listed in a single spot, but that’s not the only thing RadGrad does, there are also almost 60 opportunities that ICS students can take part in. I didn’t realize there were that many things to do outside of class which really woke me up and made me want to do more than just the bare minimum of taking the required courses to graduate.
One of the high priority tasks that were on the homepage as soon as I logged in for the first time was to select future classes. I didn’t really get what that meant, but I followed along and went to the courses explorer, I saw over 100 courses that were offered at the University. I thought I already took a good amount of ICS classes so far, but it turns out I’ve only taken 7 before this semester and there are actually almost 100 more that I could take in future semesters. I only need to take a little over 10 more to graduate, but it’s interesting to see how many different options for classes there are just in the ICS area. I have a lot of 400 level ICS elective classes left which seem to make up the most classes on the list so there’s a good chance I will find something that I’m really interested in over these next few semesters.
Another High priority task on the homepage was to look at opportunities which I thought would just be a list of a few clubs and activities that ICS students could join. When I looked at the Opportunity Explorer, I was amazed when there were 57 opportunities that were offered. These opportunities were also very diverse and had many different categories like clubs, competitions, and hackathons to name a few. I knew these events and groups were around, but I’ve never seen them all in one place like how RadGrad displays them. I’ve thought about doing more extracurricular activities, but never really knew where to get started. RadGrad makes it easy by giving a list of many possible groups to join as well as events to attend to show how many opportunities are actually available to me.
After spending about an hour going through RadGrad, I learned a lot more about courses, opportunities, and possible career interests. These are all things I hear older people talking about, but I never spend a lot fo time thinking about them myself. I just let Laulima tell me what classes to take, say I’ll think about opportunities later, and tell people I don’t know what I want to do in the future. RadGrad forced me to actually think about the classes I’m going to be taking. RadGrad also showed me opportunities available to me and made me choose some. RadGrad also made me choose computer science related jobs and see what common interests they share. Overall, in the hour or two I spent working on my RadGrad profile, I learned a lot about future classes, opportunities I can take advantage of, and several possible career choices.