Personal Introduction

Hi, my name is Thomas Deranek. I am a native of South Bend, so Notre Dame has been a part of my life for a long time. Growing up in South Bend, I attended Marian High School, a small Catholic school no more than 15 minutes away from Notre Dame. They did a fine job of teaching and letting me explore what careers I might be interested during my time there, but when I left and started my college career, I still was not sure what I wanted to do. I decided to major in Computer Science mainly because I was so interested in video games; though my own high school had very little to offer in terms of programming experience, so I had little idea of what exactly it was I signing up for.

I remember freshman year in our introductory course for engineering, we had a day where seniors from each engineering discipline talked about their experiences in their majors. The representative of Computer Science said that he also got into the major because of video games originally, but that over time he began to appreciate the subject in a much larger scope, and was not going to work at a video game studio after graduating. When I heard this, I was excited at hearing that somebody else had joined it for the same reason (though now I realize that this cannot be very uncommon). I was also resolute, however, that I would not change my mind about going into video games. I thought back then, that that was the career path that I was meant for.

As I have progressed in my education of Computer Science, I have learned how fascinating that it can be, even when programming video games is not the ultimate goal. I quickly started to appreciate the many challenges that are present in an uncountable number of unique scenarios. My first major project within the major was a video game, as it was for most people. But it was during this project that I realized how the most fulfilling part of building the game was not the game itself. Instead it was figuring out the major challenges that were present in making the game, and then deciding how to solve those problems. The further I got into the Computer Science curriculum here at Notre Dame, the more I began to fully realize this. And now I am signed up for a job next year that is in health care, rather than video games. I will be working at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri.

I believe that the most pressing issues in Computer Science are those related to security, on both a personal, and a business basis. On the business side, this concerns things such as credit card security and consumer trust. Without a strong foundation in security of computers, companies will struggle to keep their consumers’ trust. On a personal basis, there is the same issue of personal credit information being leaded, but also that of how data mining can expose people in ways that they are not comfortable with. The moral side to this comes from how people with the knowledge to bypass security must recognize the gravity of their decision to do so and think about the many ways that multitudes of people could be affected by their actions. In terms of the personal information, it is crucial to recognize that each person’s own dignity deserves as much respect on the Internet as it does normally. Thus each person’s privacy should be respected by any data mining practices taken.

I look forward to learning about these issues and many more in the class!