Initially, I was planning to become a Computer Science and Mathematics double major since I didn’t really know what I want to do in life, other than that it’d be related to CS in some way. The Math major was just to supplement the CS degree since many CS concepts are math-based. However, after taking a few classes that intrigued me, I was told that I had accidentally progressed a decent amount on the path to complete a Digital Arts and Humanities minor, and I was interested enough to accept officially signing up for it. As for the Math minor, I realized its level of rigor was not something I enjoy, but to avoid wasting all my efforts already invested, I changed to a Math minor instead.

I found myself greatly intrigued by the intersection of computer science and the humanities, especially in using technology to enhance entertainment and quality of life. The DGAH minor really helped me expand my perspective on how this is done, both practically and in regard to the social, ethical, political, and cultural implications of the efforts and products involved. I believe this is an important scholarly field that will only become more so as time goes on and technology develop, allowing us to understand the relationship between us and the world we’re changing, and how to be the best versions of ourselves.

In particular, something that popped up during my time at Carleton is the prominence and capability of AI, which swiftly went from uncanny imitations to just slightly-off depictions art-wise, and big leaps in capabilities computation wise. I used them in some of my projects, and in particular I even took an ENGL class called Writing with AI that really dived into this topic. In short, I believe AI can be a wonderful tool, greatly assisting us in many fields, but one need to be aware and not become totally reliant on it, else you risk being rendered a useless person, unable to think critically for yourself and accept whatever AI says to you, right or wrong. I certainly had fun using AI in my projects, but they were also accompanied by a lot of my own personal efforts to ensure that their outputs were up to standard and form coherent narratives for my assignments.