Prior Experience
IT and CIS
In May of 2026 I was an Intern at the Hermantown District Schools IT department. While I was in the position I experienced many different parts of CIS fields, from managing servers and writing automation scripts, to working with individual hardware including desktops, phones, and camera equipment. I learned troubleshooting, customer support, client and vendor talks and so much more.
School CIS
Before entering my degree path, in my junior year of high school, I was the CIS tech cadet and helped with PC as well as chromebook issues among both students and teachers. I also helped modify and even reset things when deemed necessary. This showed me some of the groundwork needed to be in the IT field.
LSC Coursework & Projects
General Overview
At LSC I've learned many things in pursuit of my AAS Degree.
Python Scripting, Linux Servers, User Support, HTML & CSS
Java, Javascript, php, project management
C#, Unity, Bootstrap, Mobile Apps
The Computer and Web Programming AAS encompasses creating and developing software using professional coding techniques and proper documentation. It teaches team work and the ground workings for almost any other kind of programming related job in the field.
Terraria Modding
Using my knowledge of not only game development but c# as well, I took on a challenge to myself. I created a mod for one of my favorite games: Terraria. In this mod, I created custom projectiles with physics as well as enemies with working AI. Not only was it fun, it exposed me to a lot of things I never even thought about before.
Rotating Ascii Cube
In my personal projects I also took on a classic challenge: The rotating Ascii cube. I have functionality and did the triangle and matrix math to make it rotate in any direction. This taught me many things including: Using matrices inside of code, creating personal structs for my own information. It was frustrating but fun project.
Capstone Project
As this was my last year I had a capstone project to do. What better project than a 2D platformer? I acquired assets for animations, backgrounds and the map itself. I programmed a player to be able to complete levels, avoid enemies and added life mechanics. Not only that but I had a menu and level selection system.
While making this project in Unity, I gained experience with Asana, a project management software I used to guide my experience and track my progress throughout the Project. I was able to set goals and timelines for the project and follow or modify them accordingly.
Coming out to a 48 hour total.
I didn’t end up finishing the sidescrolling background because I wanted the game to have more functionality and playability rather than more aesthetics.
Another thing I never managed to fix even after several hours of trying was the health issue. The character takes the same amount of hits to die but the health bar does the damage exponentially instead of linearly. I simply couldn’t figure out the bug in the time allotted.
In conclusion, I am happy with the playability of this game. It has the movement and platforming that I think works. Not only that, I also learned the menus and UI elements better so that I could possibly deploy the game as a full product rather than a single level without options or menus.
I learned a lot through trial and error in this project I honestly think it was a lot more rewarding than simply following the Unity tutorials in the game development class. But it also showed me just how much work and especially teamwork go into making a full game, from art, to sound, level design, and then the programming itself.
Initial Plans and Goals:
Creating the game should take approximately 50 hours.
- Creation of basic level structure (3-5 hours depending on amount)
- Player control, hitbox, and health mechanics (8 hours)
- Enemy AI, health, damage, and placement (4 hours)
- Loading screen and level continuation (3 hours)
- Player and enemy damage mechanics / alternate weapons and projectiles (6 hours)
- Sprite Creation (levels, players, enemies) (6 hours)
- Traps and Obstacle creation (2 hours)
- Puzzle mechanics, solutions and final boss (5 hours)
Times will vary between levels of difficult as bugs will happen, but it will be thorough in the documentation of the issues and success that will be had.
Emerging Tech
In my Emerging Technologies class, my final project was a group effort. It was using both AI and edge computing. My portion of the project was working with Ollama to customize and host an AI chatbot to analyze machine wellness. Then I needed to send the information via API to an endpoint to receive the report. It was mainly configuring a python backend with my AI and using ngrok as an API link.
As this was an online class, it was similar to a remote position. I had to speak and communicate through different services such as email and teams. This showed me a similar environment that I might expect in a true programming environment.
Volunteering and other Experience
Created a maple syrup tracking app for the elementary school. This app tracks yearly data with temperature, yield, weather, etc. I made it in collaboration with three other students and it greatly improved my team working ability. Not only that, I got experience working with APIs, specifically the weather API to send a get request for the day.
I also ran and refereed a local flag football program along with several of my peers in the high school. It needed to be organized and set up as well as helping out the kids and parents alike. I needed to work with others and around others for this kind of event. This was yet another group work exercise for me.
Lastly, in my school's honor society, I worked with dozens of other students to quickly and efficiently clean up our entire campus. We were in charge of splitting groups and search areas and actually commiting time to making our local areas look nice and tidy. This was a large effort that took hours and hours of work. Eventually we had finished taking all the garbage off campus entirely.
LSC Courses
- Computer User Support
- Unix System Admin
- Foundations of CIS
- Into to Programming
- Web Graphics 1
- Html & CSS
- Web Site Design
- Advanced Web Site Design
- Data Analytics Fundamentals
- Scripting and Frameworks
- Java Programming
- Server-Side Development
- Gave Dev - Object Oriented Programming
- CIS Capstone
- Mobile App Development
- Advanced Game Development
- Emerging Technologies