This year I decided to take AP Computer Science A, inspired by how much I enjoyed coding with C++ and MATLAB at a summer program called the Tennessee Governor's School for Emerging Technologies (I share my favorite experiences and all that I learned on a different section of this site in case you have not read that yet. :))

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At the beginning of the school year, I struggled with understanding how to come up with solutions to the coding challenges we were presented with. Java was very new to me, whereas some of my other classmates already had some experience. 

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However, the challenge made it so much more fulfilling. Each coding task I finished brought me so much happiness and over time I grew more confident in my coding skills. I enjoy coding, for all the ups and downs it brings. Because the end product is just a small part of the much bigger picture: all the potential applications and ways computer science can make an impact on daily life.

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Here is a picture of a coding task I recently finished! I am proud to say I have mastered using recursion in Java tasks (after much initial confusion). 

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This code, when run, will sort an ArrayList of numbers in Ascending order, by the sum of the digits in the number. At first my code for this project was extremely long and inefficient. However, by exploring different sorting algorithms, I found ways to condense and improve my code.