What does Big Picture mean to me?
Big Picture, to me, means that I am able to explore deeply into my interests, while also achieving academically. With the learning goals, I am able to dive deeper into my interests and start learning about what may happen behind the scenes. With the ability to leave the classroom to learn more, I am able to learn about how the workplace works and be able to learn more physically.
What am I interested in?
I am interested in server infrastructure, film making, software development, game development, and public transport. I have done many projects throughout my Big Picture journey based around these interests.
How did I find these interests?
How I found my interests are a bit long for a paragraph, feel free to expand these points to the interest you want to read about.
Game Development
One of my earliest interests would’ve been playing video games. My first experience with a game was playing Angry Birds on a DVD-ROM in my younger years. Since then, I wondered how I could make a game myself, and what goes into creating a world that you can interact with.
This interest covers Quantitative Reasoning, and Empirical Reasoning in the learning goals. As I need to know how to calculate game physics and do a lot of experiments.
Software Development
From game development, I found out about software development. This is something I found quite interesting, and have continued to learn about it since then. In general, I am interested in IT and Software, so it makes sense that I enjoy this topic.
This interest covers Quantitative Reasoning, and Empirical Reasoning in the learning goals. As developing software requires an understanding of mathematics, and you have to experiment quite often.
Server Infrastructure
When I started to play video games with my friends, we realized that we would need some servers to connect to, so we could play together. One of my first servers I ran was a Minecraft server, which I started to run in 2017. As of 2024, I have 3 physical servers. 2 servers run the Proxmox Virtual Environment, and 1 server is running Debian Linux 12 (Bookworm).
This interest covers Empirical Reasoning and Social Reasoning in the learning goals. Since learning about server infrastructure requires a lot of trial-and-error, and I also have a fair bit of servers running publicly.
Public Transportation
From what I recall, I started getting interested in public transport when TransportNSW introduced new bus services for Albury. I remember taking a public bus for the first time, and realising that this is one of the best ways I could get around my town, and how cheap it was to do so. Since that moment, I have been frequently researching and learning more about public transport. A lot of my public transport research is based in the state of Victoria, as it is much more accessible to use than New South Wales. Therefore, I am able to learn more in person compared to in New South Wales.
This interest covers Personal Qualities, Social Reasoning, and Communication. Public Transport is one of those things that isn’t really done that well in Australia compared to other countries, and I would really like it if it was improved, and I am very open to its improvement. It requires listening to other people’s needs and building on that, making an accessible system.