Melissa Medsker's About Me Page

I am a CSE and HCDE student at the University of Washington. I was previously a pre-med student, but have developed a passion for computer science and teaching after taking my first programming course at UW.

I am TAing CSE 154 this quarter, but have also been a TA for CSE 143 (Java II), CSE 190a (Women in Computing Seminar), CSE 311 (Foundations to Computing), and CSE 332 (Data Structures and Parallelism). I enjoy teaching and mentoring students and am happy to talk about CS/HCDE/research/teaching/college/industry, etc. if you have any questions about these!

When I'm not studying or teaching, I am raising my 7-month old Great Dane puppy Mowgli (below), poring over a puzzle book listening to SYSK, or writing new programming exercises for CodeStepByStep.

Classes I'm taking this quarter:

• CSE 312 (Foundations to Computing II)
• CSE 401 (Compilers)
• HCDE 308 (Human-Centered Visualization)

Favorites:

• Movies:
  1. Equilibrium
  2. Most Documentaries
  3. Finding Nemo
• Books:
  1. Insomnia (Stephen King)
  2. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
  3. Logic puzzle books
• Games:
  1. Pokemon
  2. NYT Crosswords
  3. Kakuro
  4. Shadow of the Colossus
• TV Shows:
  1. Game of Thrones
  2. Parts Unknown
  3. Pokemon

Favorite classes at UW:

• GENOME 372 (Genomics and Proteomics)
• CSE 311 (Foundations of Computing)
• CSE 154 (Web Programming!)

Advice for succeeding in CSE 154:

1. Take advantage of the creative project - there's a lot of content introduced in the course, but it's much easier to learn when you apply new concepts to something you're really interested in. And you can use your project to share in interviews and/or your personal website!
2. Read your homework feedback every week - your TA spends hours each week providing feedback on your assignments, and students often overlook feedback at the cost of repeating mistakes in future assignments. Also don't hesitate to ask your TA about your feedback if you don't understand something they wrote.
3. Attend all of the lectures, sections, and labs. If you don't complete all of the exercises in the section/labs, definitely work on these at home! These are one of the best ways to study for this course, and are designed to support you in completing each week's homework assignment and the course exams.