Waly Ndiaye

What’ve you enjoyed most about your area of study? Was there a particular discovery, new skill or way of thinking, or insight that you found especially valuable? Please share an example from your favorite class or experience.

Taking CMS classes was always enjoyable because of how hands-on and fun the courses were. None of the CMS classes I’ve taken have made me feel constrained when it comes to doing assignments and picking topics. My first CMS class was CMS.100: Introduction to Media Studies, and I loved the assignments (and still remember them), such as the one in which I did an Avatar: The Last Airbender character analysis. It has also been great to be in smaller classes through CMS where there was more interaction with professors and my peers. One of my other favorite CMS courses was CMS.590: Design and Development of Games for Learning, which allowed me to build on my previous lessons about game-based learning from CMS.587: Understanding and Evaluating Education in a really practical way. As a serial GTL instructor, I’ve used some of my takeaways from this course (and others in CMS) to improve and design workshops that I’ve taught over the past 3 IAPs.

How does the knowledge from this field, or your interest in it, combine with your other major or minor studies at MIT?

One of the CMS classes I took for my minor was CMS.S61, which was about the past, present, and future of computing education in the US. Being a 6-2 major, this class was really relevant to my coursework and one of my jobs, which was working as a Lab Assistant for MIT’s introductory Python course. This class had me reflecting about how I learned and have taught programming, both before and at MIT.

An MIT education includes study in the scientific, technical, social science, arts, and humanities fields. How do you think that wide range of knowledge and perspectives will be valuable to you – for your career success and for your enjoyment of life?

Taking a wide variety of humanities classes at MIT has exposed me to new fields and experiences that I might not have tried otherwise. I took HASS courses in a mainly exploratory way, just picking and choosing what I found interesting along the way. While here, I got to dabble in language classes, art courses, music ensembles, and other HASS courses from across 6 fields.

In terms of career success, I believe many of my SHASS courses helped me improve my communication skills, which will be relevant no matter what field I ultimately wind up in. And in terms of personal enjoyment, my courses have encouraged me to pursue similar experiences outside of MIT as I leave; for example, I am really looking forward to taking some more language courses on the side and drawing more frequently as a hobby (thanks 21M.601/Drawing for Designers)!

What are your plans for the future?

After graduation, I will be interning at the Bristol Robotics Lab through the MISTI-UK program and then begin work as a full-time software engineer in the fall. Longterm, I’m considering doing graduate school in Mechanical Engineering, EECS, or K-12 Education.