A.S. Computer Science · Jun 2025. The affordable, honest path into CS that turned out to be the best decision I could have made.
I started at De Anza because it was the honest, affordable path into computer science, and it turned out to be the best decision I could have made. The fundamentals were taught with real rigor, and I had the room to go far deeper than any syllabus asked me to.
Two things defined my time there. First, I fell in love with competitive programming and eventually became President of the Competitive Programming Club, organizing contests, teaching younger students, and slowly turning a small group into a real community. Second, I worked as a Teaching Assistant in the CIS Lab, where explaining ideas to other people forced me to actually understand them.
You only really learn something the day you have to teach it to someone else.
By the time I was ready to transfer, competitive programming had stopped being a hobby and become the way I thought about problems. De Anza gave me the foundation, and the confidence to aim higher.