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Capstone Creativity and Career Prep: Navigating Ideas Without Losing My Mind

Part 1: Help Your Teammates to Develop Capstone Ideas

Our group shared several exciting capstone ideas that highlighted each member’s creativity and focus on solving everyday problems. I introduced concepts such as Video Educator, an AI-driven tool for generating short educational videos; What to Eat?, a personalized food suggestion app; and Lesgo, a smart travel itinerary planner. Arun presented thoughtful projects including an AI Interview Coach, a Campus Navigation App, and a Volunteer Tracker designed to support students and communities. Erin contributed engaging mobile app ideas like a group lunch voting system, a train delay tracker, and a Too Good To Go auto-purchase tool. I found it inspiring how our ideas all center around personalization, convenience, and user engagement. There’s a lot of potential to connect our shared themes—such as intelligent recommendations and everyday problem-solving—into a unified, collaborative capstone project.

Part 2: Keep Up With Your Learning Journal

This week’s activities offered a well-rounded mix of career preparation, technical review, and personal development. I learned how to create a strong cover letter and resume specifically tailored for a software engineering internship, which helped me better understand how to present my experience, skills, and goals in a clear and professional way. The Career Guide provided valuable insights on how to stand out in job applications and interviews, and how to align my career path with my interests in technology. One of the highlights this week was participating in a mock interview, where I learned helpful tricks such as maintaining confident body language and structuring technical responses clearly and effectively. These experiences gave me more confidence in preparing for real-world interviews and understanding employer expectations.

On the technical side, the Java programming refresher helped me revisit key concepts such as loops, inheritance, and object-oriented programming, which strengthened my foundation as I continue developing my coding skills. I also had a great time designing my ILP (Individual Learning Plan) Portfolio—it was fun to personalize the layout while showcasing my learning goals and achievements in a visual format. 


I’ve only just begun this course, but it has already motivated me to stay committed and complete all the courses from start to finish. Creating the portfolio allowed me to look back on my progress and think about the direction I want to take next in my computer science journey. Overall, this week emphasized the value of ongoing learning, self-reflection, and preparation as I pursue future internship opportunities and career goals.




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