What made you choose your specific major?
Since 2016, I attended at least two summer week-long, overnight tech camps at local colleges to experiment with multiple game engines and production tools while creating new gameplay ideas and techniques. After one particular two-week summer camp, I knew game design and development would be my college major after my team was challenged to create a map, ten 3D models and one working game within five days.
What are a couple of your favorite things about your program of study?
My love for game development and working collectively as a team player contributes to my desire to inspire, encourage and learn while developing the next amazing game. I am earning a degree in a field for which I have a lot of fun.
What has been one of your favorite class projects?
One of my favorite class projects was creating a video game that focused on time travel to complete puzzles and to explore new areas of the map. I designed and created the model for the playable character and assets.
What other activities are you involved in on campus?
As a new student to Purdue West Lafayette Campus, I was careful not to initially join too many clubs or extra-curricular activities my first semester so I could invest a lot of time into classwork and lab time required for three of my courses. Learning to code, rig, animate and develop skills needed to be a game designer and developer requires a lot of time. The spare time I had was spent on many very fun extra-curricular activities such as participating in campus cooking demonstrations, attending a few Purdue Football games, entertaining my family during the fall family weekend, participating in nine social functions as a member of Women in Technology and working with fellow students on eight separate team projects which sometimes required interviewing random students. I also participated in several graduate studies related to gaming to evaluate several very cool user interfaces to earn extra credit and participated in a learning series published by Tencent Games to gain invaluable insights of video game operations and production processes.
What was something unique about one of your summer internships?
My summer internship with Fledgling Media Game Studio allowed me to work with a semi-professional gaming team. I learned how companies use a method called storypoints to assign difficulty to individual tasks to help even out the workload. I worked with softwares like Jira, Blender, and Unreal Engine.
What do you know about your program of study now that you wish someone had told you when you were choosing a major?
As it turns out, at least so far, there are not a lot of traditional high school written tests where memorization of facts and figures is key to a high GPA.
What would be one piece of advice for prospective students or new Purdue Students?
Every student should attend at least one Purdue athletics game because nothing beats that game-day spirit feeling and building relationships with your professors can open doors for growth and opportunities.