I am now a high school graduate. This is a fact that I have still not quite managed to get my head around, but I am certainly excited by it. It means that I am standing at the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life, facing the most radical change that I have yet encountered. This is challenge that I’m nervous about, but ready to meet. I’m excited to see what awaits me in the next chapter after high school.
I apologize for my absence the last few weeks, when senior year ended things got a bit crazy. Among other things, I started a part time job working as a paid youth intern for my church, started another part time job working with my grandfather to write his memoirs, received a brand new Retina MacBook Pro and spent hours preparing it and tweaking it to my liking, and I went to freshman orientation for the University of Arizona, where I will be studying next fall. My major, which shouldn’t surprise most of you, will be computer science. I’ve also debated minoring in a variety of fields, from writing to media arts to ISTA. (ISTA stands for Information, Science, Technology and the Arts. It is a fairly new major at the U of A which focuses not only on learning to program and such, but also on taking your programming skills and putting them to use in a field of your choice.) For the major at least, I’m extremely excited. I have dabbled in teaching myself programming languages, and from it have a basic knowledge of Java, Javascript and Python, as well as a fairly advanced knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3. My strongest area is in URL schemes, but I’m not quite sure whether that is really considered a programming language. However, I am very excited by the thought of being able to learn in a structured environment, where I am far less likely to miss certain areas and, most of all, forced to actually buckle down and get the studying done rather than being distracted by various other activities, something I’ve found very difficult to avoid when I sit down to teach myself a programming language. I can’t wait to gain the knowledge necessary to begin not just writing about apps, but actually writing apps myself. For that matter, I’m hoping my experiences here at The Axx critiquing apps and my experiences beta testing apps, as well as the high standards to which I hold any app I use on a a regular basis, will enable me to create apps of my own which are of similar calibre. I don’t know what I’ll create yet, but I have plenty of time to figure that out.
As for The Axx, now that summer is settling in and my schedule is becoming less volatile, my plan is to return to posting here as much as possible. This summer is looking to be a very busy one, in stark contrast to the boredom and monotony of my previous summer experiences, but I will try to post at least a link and comments to the site as close to once a day as possible, if not more, and also get out longer posts as often as I can manage. I apologize again for me recent unheralded hiatus, it should not occur again.
I do have one week long church trip I’ll be going on, and while electronics are allowed, cell phone service is nonexistent in the mountains where we’ll be staying. I’m going to attempt to get a guest writer to post during that week so the site won’t be dormant. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested, but no promises on first come first serve or anything like that, I will choose at my discretion.
Thanks so much to all of my readers. This site has been a dream for me for a long time, but I never actually expected it to be as successful as it already is. You guys are great, and I really appreciate your appreciation of what I have to say. I hope you keep reading, and as long as you do, I’ll keep writing.
