Why did I join the Cognitive Science Program?

As many other students often start their journey, I was absolutely lost as a college student. I had recently transferred from Onondaga Community College with my Associates Degree in General Studies, and thought that the best thing for myself would be to join the Computer Science program at SUNY Oswego, as it seemed like a good choice for a career path. I do still stand by the fact that a Computer Science degree from Oswego will afford you the opportunity to learn the skills you need to thrive as a software engineer. However, I didn’t even know Cognitive Science was an option. My switch to a Cognitive Science degree changed during my second semester at Oswego when I took a Master’s Degree level course titled, “Human-Computer Interaction”. While I loved programming and math, I didn’t realize that there was an entire field of study dedicated specifically to how humans and technology interact, and more specifically, a field dedicated to improving our technology based on how humans work. This class felt like an eye-opener, and the perfect clash between Computer Science and Psychology, which is exactly what I wanted.

This newfound excitement in this course prompted me to have a meeting with that professor, who also runs a Masters Level Degree Program under the same title. Thankfully, the professor guided me to the Cognitive Science degree, which focuses on many interdisciplinary fields. This meeting was the first time I had the opportunity to really take a deep look into the Cognitive Science program and what it had to offer. I noticed that within this degree, rather than just focus on programming or math courses, I would be taking more psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and cognition courses. This combination of literary and computational work was both more intriguing to me as a major, but convinced me that I would obtain more knowledge on how my own brain works.

While I could argue this degree has brought on as many questions about the mind as it has answers, the new knowledge, perspectives, and increased work ethic I have obtained has changed my life. Do you want learn about Philosophy of mind? Do you want to learn multiple different programming languages like Java, Python, or Prolog? How about how language impacts culture? Want to learn the fundamentals of AI? Are you interested in doing research in any of these fields? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you might be a good fit for the Cognitive Science Program!