Starting from scratch

When Michelle Ly ’21 came to Washington College, she took it as a fresh start in every sense. She chose Washington because she fell in love with the small, cozy feel of the campus, and she took advantage of opportunities across campus to meet new people. She chose to major in computer science because she liked the department and thought it would set her up for a good career.

 

And it did. A summer internship ahead of Ly’s junior year turned into another one with the same company the next summer, which turned into an offer letter before she graduated. 

But before that, Ly had a lot to learn. While she hoped a degree in computer science would lead to a good career, aside from attending a few coding camps in high school, she did not have much experience. 

When Ly started pursuing her major, she was anxious about whether she’d succeed. But guidance from her professors mixed with her own hard work and determination proved to be a successful combination. 

“When you go to college, you really need to open your mind and be ready to learn,” Ly said of her time here. “Trust the people around you, especially your professors and your community, and don’t be afraid of failure.” 

Ly said she learned three important things from the computer science department—the curriculum and the professors she worked with—while she was here. 

One, she learned foundational skills like problem solving and how data structures, programs, and code work in a general sense. 

“A lot of companies have a very specific way of completing a project or using a software and they don’t expect you to know it immediately because it’s so specific to what they’re doing,” Ly said. “But it helps to have that base level of understanding of how a program should work. I might not know the exact way to fix something in one coding language, but I know how to fix it in another and how an issue works there so I can work backward and figure it out.” 

Two, it’s OK to make mistakes, to take your time learning something so you really understand it, and to ask for help when you need it. 

And three, computer science is collaborative, and you have to be able to communicate with other people and explain your code. 

Over time, Ly’s anxieties about the possibility for future success eased. “I got a lot more confident in my ability to learn and to do this work and make my time at college the best I could to learn new things.” 

During her time at Washington, Ly built up a strong computer science resume. She participated in the John S. Toll Fellowship Program, working with Professor Shawn Ramsey on a research project that attempted to render fractals—repeating patterns in nature—in three-dimensional models. She completed several internships during the semester and over the summer. She also worked in the Quantitative Skills Center as a peer tutor and was an assistant in the theatre department’s light shop. 

All of these experiences taught Ly the importance of communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. These skills have served her immensely as a software engineer, where she does a lot of testing and fixing bugs. While Ly’s work currently intersects front-end and back-end development, she is hoping to further specialize her skills to focus on front-end development. 

Ly held the position she was offered as a student, at Geon Technologies, for several years before taking a software engineering job at her current employer, Captivation Software, LLC. 

“I still use those different aspects of what I learned at college in my day-to-day life,” Ly said. “The foundational things—how to problem solve, how to look for solutions—help me everyday.”

— MacKenzie Brady '21