My Journey from Pangasinan State University to Software Engineering

I did not plan to become a Software Engineer. If you had told my high school self that I would end up building software for a living, I would have laughed. I was supposed to be an engineer, the traditional kind, the one with a hard hat and a blueprint, not a keyboard and a terminal. This is the story of how a rushed decision, a global pandemic, a lot of stubbornness, and one very special person turned me into the Software Engineer I am today, and how Pangasinan State University became the unlikely starting point of it all.

A Rushed Decision That Changed Everything

My family moved from Metro Manila to Pangasinan, and everything happened fast. I did not have enough time to research schools properly. My real plan was to take an Engineering course, the classic path I had my heart set on.

By the time I looked for a school in the province, I was already late for submission, and the slot for Engineering was gone. The school year was closing in, and I had to decide quickly. None of the schools I knew of in the province offered the Engineering course I wanted, so I picked the most common option nearby, Pangasinan State University, and chose a course that felt close enough to what I originally wanted without being IT.

I picked Computer Science.

I got approved almost immediately. What I did not realize until later was just how far that campus actually was from home. That single detail would end up shaping the next four years of my life.

First Year: Learning to Code During a Pandemic

My first year in college happened right in the middle of the pandemic. Classes were online, which honestly made things easier in some ways. We started with C++ as our stepping stone into programming, the usual first language for a lot of Computer Science students.

At that point, I was not a fan of programming at all. I sat through the lessons because I had to, not because I wanted to.

What actually hooked me was something outside of class. I joined a robotics program at the University of the East, and I reconnected with a high school classmate who used to hack websites for fun. Back then, I thought what he did was just a "pakulo," a nerdy hobby with no real substance. I was still convinced my path was Engineering, not code.

But somewhere between the robotics exposure and seeing what programming could actually do, something shifted. By the end of my first year, I was starting to believe that Computer Science might actually be for me.

Second Year: Moving Into the Dorm and Almost Quitting

Second year brought face-to-face classes back, and that is when the distance problem became real. The campus was far from my town, far enough that I had to move into a dorm just to make it to class on time, even though I was technically still in Pangasinan.

This was the hardest stretch. I had zero friends there when I started. I was far from my parents, living in a new environment, and doubting whether I had made the right choice. There were moments I seriously considered quitting.

What kept me going was a simple decision. I told myself I only needed to endure three years away from my parents to become a better programmer. That mindset, plus the independence that living away from home forced on me, became one of the most valuable parts of my college experience.

So instead of hiding in my dorm, I decided to try everything I wanted to try. I joined algoRHYTHM, the organization within our course. I joined contests, and I even took part in short film competitions, something I never imagined myself doing as a Computer Science student.

Slowly, I built a new circle of friends. We called ourselves WAW, and that group became my support system for the rest of college.

Meeting the Love of My Life

Second year also gave me something I was not looking for at all. It was during this season of saying yes to everything that I met the love of my life.

The first time I saw her, a thought crossed my mind that I could not shake: "What if I marry her?" So I pursued her. Today, we have been together for three years.

She pushes me in everything I do, both to be myself and to bring out talents I did not know I had. I used to be a boy who kept putting limits on himself. With her beside me, I slowly stopped seeing those limits. A lot of the growth you will read about in the next chapters, the leadership roles, the competitions, the confidence to put myself out there, started with her believing in me before I fully believed in myself.

She is a big part of the man I am today, and I am lucky to have her. Justine Louise Pespes, the love of my life.

Third Year: Peak Growth and Learning Software Development Seriously

Third year is where everything clicked into place. I was appointed PRO of algoRHYTHM, helped coordinate several events, and started entering more competitions. I joined startup competitions and inter-school Computer Science competitions, testing what I had learned against other students and teams.

This was also the year I started taking software development seriously, not just as a school requirement but as an actual craft. I read books that changed how I thought about writing code, especially The Pragmatic Programmer and Clean Code. Those two books shaped a lot of my early engineering habits, from how I structure code to how I think about maintainability.

Looking back, third year was the turning point where Computer Science stopped being my backup course and became my actual identity.

Fourth Year: Thesis, OJT, and Graduating with Distinction

Fourth year was the most demanding, but also the most rewarding.

Our thesis focused on machine learning: a system that could read doctors' handwritten prescriptions, a real problem with real-world use cases in healthcare. It took many long nights, but we successfully built it.

In our last semester, I did my On-the-Job Training as a System Developer at the Provincial Engineering Office of Pangasinan. We built a system that took their entire workflow from paper-based to paperless, digitizing processes that used to rely entirely on physical documents.

I graduated with academic distinction, finishing with a general weighted average of 1.52.

From Pangasinan State University to Software Engineer

Looking back at the whole journey, from almost enrolling in Engineering, to landing in Computer Science by circumstance, to almost quitting in second year, to graduating with distinction and real project experience, I would not change a single part of it.

Pangasinan State University was not my first choice, but it became the place where I actually became a Software Engineer. The distance, the dorm life, the friends, the competitions, the thesis, the OJT, and the person who believed in me through all of it built the foundation I still stand on today.

If there is one thing I want people reading this to take away, it is this: sometimes the course you did not plan for becomes the career you are meant to have, and sometimes the place you never wanted to go is exactly where you meet the people who change your life.