Annie Wong

Bachelor's

Computer Science

University of California, Berkeley

Course Intern

During my time at UC Berkeley, I have academically interned for two of my favorite courses, CS 61A and CS 61B. A great majority of students at Cal will take 61A as their first venture into CS and as such not only is the composition of the course incredibly diverse, but it also serves to create many student’s notions of what CS has to offer. CS 61B, as opposed to CS61A, has increased difficulty and complexity of concepts and longer assignments, which need more rigorous thinking. This poses a point of hardship for students because it requires better time management. With those considerations in mind, I decided to take on the responsibility as a course intern to ensure that all students I tutored felt properly equipped to succeed in the course, and to create a positive, supporting atmosphere to both encourage students to further pursue CS, and implement the skills they learn in their own daily life. I taught for these courses because I wanted to inspire the next iteration of CS students to change the world in meaningful, beneficial ways. A computer science educator should use their grit to emphasize and help students overcome the struggles that they may face in associated labs and homework assignments. As an educator, I felt that it was my responsibility to encourage my students, thus allowing them to feel more comfortable with struggling and thus, adopting the growth mindset.