Ben Leskey's Blog: academics

I graduated from MVNU!

Sun, 07 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

I graduated from MVNU yesterday, summa cum laude & Honors scholar! I did it, an A in every class!

I'm really done hit me in a small way now that I can clean up all the academic files and folders and apps I have hanging around my computers. I don't need my LMS anymore. Most of my hundreds of old assignments are worth as much as the paragraphs I wrote in 3rd grade. Notebooks filled with doodles and math homework are useless.

Of course, the important things I started during my time at MVNU won't stop just because I graduated. Projects like my mapping tool and the creative writing work that I've done will continue, the dozens of good friends I've made are still my friends even now that we've gone our separate ways, and all the social and academic knowledge pounded into my head is solidly there, ready for the rest of my life.

MVNU sURC press release featuring my mapping tool

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000

See https://www.mvnu.edu/news/mvnu-students-shine-during-symposium-for-undergraduate-research-and-creative-works

First place prize for my mapping tool presentation at MVNU's sURC

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Update 2023-04-25: MVNU sURC press release featuring my mapping tool

I presented my Mapping Tool for fifteen minutes at MVNU's sURC on April 5th, taking home the first place prize of the Symposium. My friends and faculty showed up en masse at my presentation, making for a lively Q&A and a really fun time.

sURC itself was interesting. There were around twenty presenters in total. The Honors students presented their senior projects and other students presented their summer research projects in a conference format. In my room we had a wide variety of presentations: an analysis of continuous glucose monitors in diabetic patients, a presentation of a concussion-detecting device for athletes, an examination of religion and spirituality in occupational therapy, and my own software project.

This sURC presentation was my presentation for the Honors program portion of my project, so in it I focused on how user feedback shaped the development of the mapping tool with an overview of project features and the development process. Later I'll have a twenty-five minute presentation on the details of programming and engineering the project.

For more information on the mapping tool, including download links and a quick-start guide, see the mapping tool website.

(More about how I made the GIFs used in the presentation.)

I took the ETS major field test for computer science

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Every senior student at MVNU takes a standardized assessment. The assessment lets MVNU administration compare how well their students are doing against other institutions, and how well each program is teaching the fundamentals of the program's field. In my case the assessment was the ETS major field test for computer science.

While I knew the test was coming up, I wasn't given any information about what would be on the test, and since I knew it wouldn't affect my graduation or GPA I wasn't particularly concerned about studying for it. The day before the testing day I decided to look into exactly what I would be taking. I found a sample questions document (archived) by searching on google. These sample questions were representative of the actual test—as one'd expect—and there was nothing I hadn't seen in my courses at MVNU. The bulk of the questions seemed to be more "Computer Science" than "Computer Programming" and were covered by two courses in particular that I'd taken: Data Structures & Algorithm Design and Survey and Organization of Programming Languages. I didn't study much beyond checking out the sample questions.

On the day of the actual test classes were cancelled for everyone to let seniors take their major field assessments, juniors take their general education assessments (only every other junior class has to take these, I didn't have to last year), and everyone except graduating seniors to meet with their advisors and schedule classes for the next year. Sadly, I didn't get to enjoy much of the cancelled classes as I had to wake up for the major field test at 9 AM, and I still had my meeting with my Honors project advisor to keep wrapping things up. The test was proctored—as required by ETS—and administered in the main computer lab. The test itself was not very stressful; the sample questions were good preparation and representation of the actual assessment.

My score was displayed and e-mailed to me immediately after I completed the test. I scored 181 on a scale from 120–200, placing me in the 98th percentile. This is pretty good, and I'm happy with the score, and how it reflects on my learning at MVNU. I could have done a little better with more studying, but most of the questions could be solved with logic, and that's not something learned by cramming before a test—only years of practice can build that kind of understanding and that's what brought my score so high.

I couldn't find much other discussion online about the ETS major field test, just a couple blog posts from a student's blog.

Quirks of the results page

The results page pops up the individual results for the test that I took, but interestingly if I press an "illegal key" like the Windows key, it alerts me and leaves the page. Why? I don't know. Maybe it thinks I'm still taking the test.