A Year in Review 2019-20

Wesley Reed | Year-In-Review

What specific experiences in the past year have had the most impact on your personal and professional trajectory?

The biggest experience I have had in the last year has been working at the UC IT Solutions Center (ITSC). They have been gracious enough to keep me on for the last 3 semesters, and I continue to learn more there than in my classes. Since I am now one of the more senior developers at ITSC, I continue to be given more and more responsibility. In addition to being the lead developer on my original project, my responsibilities now include server maintenance and administration, development operations, office administrator, client relations, and I have designed several proof-of-concept applications for potential clients.

Now that I have become a project lead at ITSC, part of my responsibilities are to delegate tasks to the other people on the project and trust that they will get the job done. Learning to delegate tasks has been a struggle for me this year, because I like to own what I’m delivering and see to it personally. Every time I delegate a task, part of me worries that it might not get done, it might not get done to the level of quality that I hold myself to, or it might take longer than if I were to do it. I’ve been working a lot with my supervisor to overcome this, and know how to delegate and hold others accountable for their work.

This year, I worked with my high school robotics team as a mentor. Although it was cut short due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), we had a lot of fun this season. It was really cool being on the montor side and being able to guid the next generation of robotics students. Instead of stressing constantly about getting the code perfect for the robot, I was able to sit back and look at all of the different projects going on during the build season and offer my help in several different areas (including the code). I definitely learned a lot about being a leader from this experience, and I was able to do several side projects that helped me learn about maintaining a Windows Active Directory server, creating printed circuit boards, soldering surface chips, and much more.

Articulate specific personal and/or professional goals for the next year.

In the next year I hope to:

  • Make some new friends of campus
  • Complete the current version of the client application at work and plan the next version
  • Have fun with the UC band
  • Take on the challenge of my MSIT courses