About
Hi and welcome to my project. My goal is to write down the progress I make throughout my years in college as well as life. My name is William Blommaert and I’m currently studying Applied Computer Science at the University College of Karel De Grote in Antwerp, Belgium. Most of the time we spend there as students is basically fooling around with each other. Pranks, gaming, name it and it happens. But maybe I should try to explain why exactly I’m going to try to create and maintain a blog. Most people find it pretty straightforward when one makes a blog to write down things he/she endures daily.
My case is different. I want to be able to write down my progress in life, how things are done, how I will handle problems and/or projects to come. I want to write down my progress as I complete my courses at college. But not only the serious things such as education and work will be written down. My leisure activities are not to be forgotten. Maybe this will be something I can look back at when I’ve got a family and kids. Memories are always nice to keep and remember, especially the nice ones.
Now, about myself, as I said I’m a student at the Karel De Grote University College in Antwerp, Belgium. But what about the person behind the student? I was born on the 4th of January, 1989 at the hospital located in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. As I grew up in primary school I noticed that computers and all the technical things and issues it brings started to interest me more and more. My original dream job as a kid was either an architect or a lawyer (aren’t those one of the common stereotyped child dreams, other than firefighters and soldiers?). It wasn’t untill 4th grade that I really got into computers.
It all started with my good old Pentium I at the time, with a massive 200mhz clockspeed and 32mb of EDO-RAM. I started experimenting and messing around with it and eventually managed to get Windows 98 installed over Windows 95. To some that may seem little to no achievement at all but to me it was the begin of my life as a computer oriented person. Not long after the first commands in commandline I started digging into the internal pheriphals to find out how these things work and were made up and put together. As a beginner, and most of all an amateur, I fried my first mainboard at this time as well. Other than being able to point and mark every part of the computer I’ve never really gotten into the circuit boards and the likes. I stuck with the outside, rather than the inside, which seemed too complicated for a 10-year-old at the time.
As soon as I went to highschool, my interest grew and my dream job was pretty much set to be computer oriented. Even though I had all of this in mind, I still went for a course nowhere near this: Latin. I think that was one of the larger mistakes I made in my life, but still I haven’t got any regrets to have followed this particular course. Latin is a very structured and clean language with not much exceptions and a strict grammar system. All in all, it trains your brain to become structured and used to memorising and maintaining a lot of information.
Computers mostly bring up videogames as well, and my case isn’t that different from the usual stereotype. As most of the contemporary youth, I’ve been playing videogames for most of the time, spending my days behind either a monitor of a computer or a TV hooked up with a console, not to mention the handhelds such as the Gameboy and PSP. My parents were kind of against videogames and spending excessive amounts of time playing them. But the older I got, the more they allowed and eventually they couldn’t keep me from playing them anyway. I do admit they have had an influence on my performance in school. I was aware of it but didn’t give it much regard. Thus I failed at school and had to redo my last form of highschool (which was a pain in the ass).
After obtaining my highschool degree and finally saying goodbye to the old school, I was free and went straight to the Karel de Grote University College in Antwerp to get myself added to the Applied Computer Science course. The only downside was that none of my friends or classmates was interested in this course and I ended up alone in a new world. The upside on the other hand was that I met a ton of new people with the exact same interests as me, which is ofcourse a plus. As I type this I’m close to finishing my first year of the 3-year course and I’m hoping to pass without having to redo any exams this summer. So far I’m pretty confident that I’ll be passing on to the second year without much trouble.
As for the future, my course has three ways to go: Application Designer, Software Manager and Network and System Coordinator. The first being my favourite at this time and the second being my alternative option. I’m still sorting out which one I’ll be picking at the end of the second year but I’ve still got time enough to do so.