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In this post I talk about the journey I have made going through a Undergraduate degree at the University of Kent. I have just finished my final year University exams and am eagerly awaiting results day on 19th June 2009. The last 3 years sure have gone quick and im very excited to see what the future holds for me!

Preparing for University

It was nearly 3 and a half years now when I decided that I was going to put myself through university and formally educate myself. I was very lucky to find my working/play passion early in life (around 16 years old) which was the design of computer software, particularly web based software. Two of my teachers should be credited for helping me to discover this passion: Mark Thomson (Oriel High School ICT Teacher) and Simon Rous (East Norfolk Sixth Form College ICT Teacher). Knowing the career path I wanted to take, there were primarily three decisions I had to make.

Should I go to University?

Much of the material I had read and many people had told me that web design/development is a very practical subject and universities tend to struggle keeping up with the fast pace of the continually evolving industry. Throughout college I offered to work on some projects with people on the Ultrashock Flash forums and it eventually led to me being asked to do quite a bit of freelance work. Not only did that set doubts in my mind but also I discovered that my year was the first year they were adding tuition fees of around £3000 per year. My mind and its decision process was like a ping pong game, rapidly backwards and forwards between the two outcomes.

In the end I decided to go for the following main reasons:

• Up until this point I had lived at home which is a small village and didn't have knowledge of life skills such as proper money management, bill paying and house keeping.
• Not only is the web a fast paced industry, the computer industry is as a whole. The primary platform of the computer industry changes every so often and the rules change drastically. I wanted to get a solid foundation in the theory so I can apply this knowledge to any new platform and not just the web.
• I come from a small village in the UK with a population maybe hitting 10 thousand. I wanted to have the potential to meet new people, especially people who have the same interests and learn from them.

Should I go to the local University (University of East Anglia) or one further away?

Much of this decision was dictated by what the courses were like on offer at each of the universities. I looked at the following three universities primarily:

• UEA (University of East Anglia) - local
• Bournemouth University
• University of Kent

Given that I wanted to meet new people and develop my life skills I decided to go to non-local university. In the end I chose to go to the University of Kent as I liked their course offering and the university itself the most.

What course should I study.

I knew my career path so the course options were thankfully relatively small. There were three main courses that I looked at:

• Computer Science
• Web/Internet Computing Science
• Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence

I ruled out Artificial Intelligence because I did not do mathematics at A-level which many of the universities required for this course. Also, it isn't directly relevant to my chosen career path. The decision between going with straight computer science or web/internet computer science was a more difficult one. On the one had i did not want to pidgeon-hole myself into a single area of Computing Industry too much, but on the other I did not like some parts of a traditional Computer Science degree (Law and Business modules etc). In the end I decided to go with the Web Computing degree at the University of Kent. I was surprised at their take on the Web Computing degree, which nobody else seemed to have. It is basically half Computer Science and half Multimedia Technology. So not only would I gain a fundamental knowledge of the underlying principles of Computer Science but also get to learn at a higher level with designing rich experiences for users.

The first year (Stage 1)

The first year had one big upside, and another huge downside. The upside was the course was mostly very interesting and I also got to meet very nice new people along with meeting my girlfriend to be. The major downside was that the studying that year counted for nothing. This is something I struggled with as I was thinking I had committed a year of my life, and a lot of money for this year to count for nothing. During the first year I studied the following subjects:

• Managers and Organisations
• Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
• Introduction to Information Systems
• Computer Systems
• Further Object Oriented Programming
• Website Design
• Mathematics for Multimedia
• Interaction Design

Apart from the single business module I absolutely loved this year of studies and they were generally very basic and straightforward. Oh.. nearly forgot. I also was fortunate to be offered a job at the University as a part-time web programmer working on their web systems and their public websites.

The second year (Stage 2)

This year I was much more comfortable with the degree as now it started to count. I also got promoted at the start of this year (after 8 months working at the University) to Senior Web Programmer which was an amazing achievement and one which I'm very proud of and grateful for the people that gave me the promotion. This year I studied the the following subjects:

• Algorithms, Data Structures and Complexity
• Distributed Systems and Networks
• Operating Systems and Architecture
• Software Engineering Practice
• Database Systems
• Multimedia technology (audio and video)
• Internet and Multimedia Platforms (ASP.NET, Ecommerce, XML, Security)

Funnily enough, the module I enjoyed most this year was not a directly web related one: Operating Systems and Architecture. In this module they taught us how operating systems are build and dissected the inner workings of the MIPS32 processor. I was very interested how these very low level aspects of computers work. I am naturally a person who likes to know what goes on "under the hood" and this module did exactly that.

The final year (Stage 3)

This year was very much different to the second one. First of all you had to invent and execute your own project start to finish and secondly the modules now moved into very new stuff and some of it even cutting edge. I also got to choose my modules from a selection this year and I ended up picking the following:

• Advanced Programming Techniques (Shell scripting, C, JVM and Advanced Java Language Features)
• Computer security and Cryptography
• E-Commerce
• Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
• Digital Photography
• Final Year Project

My final year project was very interesting to carry out and also something that i am now very proud of. I build a "social network style" web application for the creative events industry for the run up to London 2012. This project was funded by a few parties such as University of Kent, Arts Council England. The project was also recently awarded the inspire mark from the Cultural Olympiad and is now officially recognized. You can find out more via it's the portfolio entry in the Work section. The best module this year had to be the final year project due to the recognition it is now receiving along with the scope it afforded for me to learn within the domain of building web applications.

Final thoughts and the future

So was University worth it? Looking back, I got really bored with it at some points but in the end, taking everything into account such as meeting my wonderful girlfriend, be offered the senior programmer job at the university and the knowledge that it had armed me with it was definitely worth it.

I am now looking forward to the future getting a full-time job, working with a talented, enthusiastic and exciting company on first rate products and services. I am primarily looking to either continue the web development career or start building mobile applications for platforms like iPhone, Palm WebOS and Google Android.