Looking back on my summer school experience: Kais
24th October 2019
My name is Kais Adhar, I’m a 15-year-old Tunisian teenager and a coding student at Oxbridge International Summer School.
In this blog, I am going to talk about my experience of the course and why I chose to study coding.
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Why I chose Oxbridge International Summer School
I have always dreamed of visiting Oxford and Cambridge University and hopefully even studying there. Since I am still in high school, I needed to search for a way to attend a summer school in order to gain an idea about the academic life in these universities.
When I noticed that Oxbridge International Summer School offer to spend 2 weeks at the while studying and doing other activities, I applied for it immediately.
I started to read more about the summer school from the blogs on this website, so that I had a clear idea about what I was going to experience there. When I received the confirmation email, I was incredibly happy and I was already certain that this would be a life-changing experience. After learning more about OISS and showing my family what life looks like there, she said yes because she knew that I was able and ready for this. We put our trust in the staff and in the tutors and we were sure that they would do their best to give me the best experience of my life and take good care of me..
preparing for the summer school
After applying on the Oxbridge International Summer School website, I received an email that included the welcome pack. This welcome pack gave me an idea of what I was going to need and what to bring. There wasn't much time to get the visa process ready and luckily the staff members did understand our issue so they sent us the needed files as fast as they could.
Also, I had to bring all the essentials: laptop, power adaptor, phone... Stress is a small word to describe what I felt during these preparations, but the visa issue was the only thing that was making me nervous. I also had to put all the contact information in my phone and write down the location of the EPA Center (the location of the summer school) and everything that I needed to get to there.
Studying Coding
I have always loved technology ever since I was young, and I was interested in how machines and mechanisms function. That's what introduced me into the world of programming, which was the course I chose to study during my 2 weeks in the OISS. My tutor Mr. Abhirup gave us all the needed information and the essentials to learn how to code in a new programming language. Which, for me, was "C".
After the first 3 to 4 lectures, I was a bit confused because my initial knowledge about another programming language, "C#" was conflicting with the information I was learning during the course. And to be honest, I was a bit nervous during the first lectures because so far in school I had not studied coding formally. Although I knew how to code I felt like this course was going to test my skills. At the beginning of the course, we started with some input-output operations to have a look at most used functions in "C". Then, we proceeded to learning about the different loops and conditions that a programmer is going to use a lot in their projects.
Another thing that I really enjoyed was the homework, our homework was writing code and solving different mathematical problems. This gave a bit of space to discover more about coding and to create more and more varied solutions. Our tutor was also into debating different opinions and into trying different methods. He didn't hesitate in trying any of the suggested possibilities to give us as much information as possible. After this course, I was really amazed by the amount of work that I completed during those two weeks because it was very intense and it required a lot of hard work but I had no problem with that because I adapted to it day by day.
I really enjoyed my time on the Oxbridge International Summer School, I would recommend this course to any one thinking of applying. It has really helped advance my computer science skills and given me the push I need to keep improving.
For a memorable experience like mine, I would encourage you to apply for the summer school!